Dec 10 (DM) Detained Attorney-at-Law Hejaaz Hizbullah's lawyers filed a writ Petition before the Court of Appeal seeking access to Hizbullah. When the matter was taken up today Romesh De Silva PC appearing on behalf of the Petitioner said that the lawyers have not had any access to Mr. Hizbulah since September. He said they could not obtain instructions from Mr. Hizbullah as to what other remedies must be pursued with regard to his detention. Prez of Court of Appeal Justice more..

Dec 10 (CT) The Govt is to bear the cost of cremating COVID-19 unclaimed dead under instructions of Prez Rajapaksa, the Director General of Health Services (DGHS), Dr. Asela Gunawardena said. He said the majority of families of the COVID-19 deceased were finding it difficult to bear the expense of cremating the bodies of infected relatives and loved ones. The Prez issued a directive to conduct all COVID-19 cremations for which the expenses would be obtained from more..

Dec 10 (Island) Education Minister Prof G.L. Peiris told Parliament yesterday that the govt had introduced a transparent and fair method to select university Vice Chancellors. Responding to a question raised by Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, Prof Peiris said that the govt had set up a five-member committee to select eligible applicants. The committee comprises experts from the administrative service. more..

Dec 10 (FT) Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka) Past President Arjuna Herath earned high praise recently from International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) outgoing President Dr. In-Ki Joo for his exceptional leadership in steering the global body’s Professional Accountancy Organization Development Committee (PAODC). During an IFAC Council Meeting attended by delegates of the Professional Accountancy Organizations (PAOs) from across the world, more..

Dec 10 (EN) SL’s Muslims are not abandoning the remains of their relatives who died of Covid 19 but are not cooperating with the authorities who want to cremate the bodies against their wishes, a prominent Human Rights activist says. Human Rights Lawyer Shreen Saroor said, that this is a form of protest “as the community does not want to sign notes of consent to cremation as it goes against their beliefs.” Her comments come as the authorities begin the process of cremating more..

Dec 10 (DM) In relation to indigenous syrup claiming to cure COVID-19, which was distributed by an Ayurvedic practitioner, State Minister Dr. Sudarshini Fernandopulle urged the public not to panic and requested them not to queue up seeking the concoction, until research is concluded. She said the Health Ministry had agreed in principle to carry out scientific research on the medicine and added based on the results, more..

Dec 10 (DN) Light Rail Transit (LRT) proposed by the previous Govt was a huge waste of money and the cost of building just one kilometer was Rs. 26,388 million, State Minister Kanaka Herath said. He made these remarks while participating in the 2021 budget debate relating to the Ministry of Highways. He further stated that US $ 2,200 million has been estimated for the construction of the 15 km LRT system. A huge financial irregularity was revealed for this project and if the proposal more..

Dec 10 (CT) Ministry of Environment has taken a decision to charge a deposit of Rs 5 or Rs 10 for a 185ml quarter bottle of liquor, to minimise environmental pollution caused by haphazard disposal of bottles, Director of Environment Pollution Control and Chemical Management, Mahinda Werahera said. This decision was to address the harm caused to the environment due to irresponsible disposal of quarter liquor bottles, as well considering requests from liquor manufacturers. more..

Dec 10 (DM) SL expatriates will no longer required to undergo 14-day home quarantine period if they test negative after PCR tests conducted following the mandatory quarantine period, Army Commander Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva said. He said SL expatriates returning to the country from overseas are being sent to serve quarantine process at govt managed quarantine centres or hotels following PCR tests conducted on arrival more..

Dec 10 (Island) PM Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday said all those responsible for the Easter Sunday carnage would be severely punished. The Prime Minister said those who had a hand in the carnage were attempting to influence powerful persons and absolve themselves of the blame, but the findings of the PCoI on the Easter Sunday killings would reveal those responsible. “None of them would be given protection and they would have to pay for the crime,” Rajapaksa said. more..

Dec 10 (MB) Sri Lanka has sent back the first batch of hundreds of containers of waste to the U.K., becoming the latest nation in the Global South to push back against abuses of a worldwide recycling framework by exporters in the West. An initial consignment of 21 containers arrived back in the U.K., the county of origin, in late November, according to the ship-tracking data. There are still another 242 containers waiting to be shipped back, according to Sri Lanka Customs. more..

Dec 10 (AD) Third Reading of the Budget for the year 2021 was passed in the parliament with a two-thirds majority. Reportedly, 151 MPs voted in favor of the proposed Budget while 54 voted against it. Accordingly, the third reading of the 2021 Budget has passed in the parliament by a majority of 97 votes. However, members of SJB and TNA were not present in the chamber at the time of voting. The debate of the Committee Stage or more..

Dec 10 (FT) Seylan Bank has affirmed its position among the topmost corporates in the country by featuring in the Business Today Top 30 ranking for listed entities. Despite the many challenges posed by unprecedented events during the year, the stability and unwavering commitment to excellence has ensured the presence of the ‘Bank with a Heart’ in this elite ranking, the company announced. Listed entities made it to the ranking for the financial year 2019-2020, more..

Dec 10 (NR) The number of COVID-19 cases recorded in Sri Lanka has risen to 30,375, with another 300 new cases identified today. Accordingly 279 cases are linked to the Minuwangoda-Peliyagoda coronavirus cluster, while the remaining 21 patients were detected from prisons. Meanwhile 461 persons have been discharged after recovering from COVID-19 during the past 24-hours. Epidemiology Unit of the Ministry of Health said total recoveries accordingly increased to 22,261. more..

Dec 10 (DM) Deepa Mehta’s Funny Boy, a Canadian drama film shot in SL, is to be released on Netflix today. Based on acclaimed writer Shyam Selvadurai’s book of the same title, the coming-of-age film follows a young Tamil boy who explores his sexuality. His personal struggles however are depicted against the backdrop of the tensions building between Tamils and Sinhalese, on the cusp of the brutal 3-decade civil war. more..

Dec 10 (NR) SJB MP Dr. Harsha de Silva says the Auditor General has stated that the statistics in the 2021 Budget pertaining to the GDP and the Budget deficit are false. MP de Silva said commencing the Committee Stage Debate on the 18 of November he pointed to a jugglery in the numbers cited in the 2021 Budget. The MP said the GDP cited in the Budget cannot be a positive figure. The MP added reports by the Finance Ministry indicate that the figures tabled by the Prime Minister are false. more..

Dec 10 (NR) PM Mahinda Rajapaksa says when the 2021 Budget proposal was tabled in Parliament Rs.70 billion was spent on COVID-19 related measures with Rs.82 billion spent since the Committee Stage Debate. In his closing statement in Parliament during the Committee Stage Debate, PM in his capacity as the Minister of Finance said they hope to increase expenditure on COVID-19 mitigation efforts to Rs.90 billion. PM said the new govt has been faced with many challenges, more..

Dec 10 (CI) Sri Lanka's tour of South Africa is likely to go ahead as planned after Sri Lanka Cricket's medical staff confirmed they were satisfied with the bio-bubble arrangements being planned for the series. SLC had reconsidered the tour following England's withdrawal from their ODI series in South Africa last week. The board was concerned about the possibility of SL cricketers returning unwell, something that could put more..

Dec 11 (DM) Lankans are desperate as others the world over and keep their fingers crossed as native medicine practitioner Dhammika Bandara awaits the authorities to approve a concoction he made to combat Covid-19. Lankans are quick to celebrate any achievement. But here this medic is negotiating a challenging time with lives of patients in one hand a local product he made on the other. In laymen’s term he could hit the jackpot if this native medicine is approved by govt medical authorities. more..

Dec 11 (DM) Recently some prominent medical doctors in Sri Lanka claimed in electronic media that beef is a carcinogenic food which means a causative agent of cancer. We as responsible medical professionals would like to analyse this statement in the light of science and give a balanced, neutral opinion on What causes cancer. In this article we will be presenting a broad overview of cancer-causing foods, food habits and other lifestyle factors backed by scientific evidence. more..

Dec 11 (DM) Human trafficking has become a global crisis that has questioned the worth of being human. Victims are exploited as commodities, falling prey to the global flesh trade, often ending up as single mothers, sometimes infected with HIV and other illnesses, with no means of survival. Human trafficking is a serious problem in Nepal and this is the main reason why Maiti Nepal was established in 1993. more..

Dec 11 (GV) This year’s Human Rights Day theme is Recover Better – Stand up for Human Rights. The theme directly addresses the COVID-19 pandemic and tries to recover better from the global crisis with ensuring human rights. Although universality and inalienability are key principles of human rights, the int'l human rights law considers that human rights can be limited in an emergency. With the various religious leanings in Asian society that always emphasizes the citizen’s duties and more..

Dec 11 (Roar) The last time Ramona Abeygunesekera-Kolar (33) saw her husband was ten days after their wedding. We got married last year on 18 Dec, and he returned to Slovenia on 28 Dec, she told Roar Media. “When he left, I thought, It’s fine, I’ll be with him in a couple of months. We had plenty of plans for 2020, like to move in together in Slovenia. But look what happened.” Abeygunesekera-Kolar is one of many people around the world who have been separated more..

Dec 11 (TM) Sri Lanka’s medical community has been sharply divided over the removal of the Head and several members of the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC) by Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi last week. In a historic move, the Minister removed five SLMC members including its President Prof. Harendra De Silva based on recommendations by a five-member committee including specialist Prof. Hemantha Perera, more..

Dec 11 (GV) Restrictions on travel and gatherings have made it more challenging for solidarity and mobilizing by survivors, victim families and activists. COVID-19 was used to restrict freedom of expression and assembly although multiple gatherings violating health guidelines were allowed and even screened on TV. Years-long struggles for justice in courts, on the streets and internationally, such as by families of disappeared and those whose lands have been occupied by the military, more..

Dec 11 (CT) Recent traffic accidents on SL’s roads seemingly cause more deaths than the currently raging COVID-19 Pandemic. A random examination of 4 recent days passed made by this newspaper, namely last Monday, Tuesday and Friday as well as Wednesday (30 Nov, 1 Dec, 4 Dec and 9 Dec) showed that while roads claimed 15 lives, COVID-19 claimed one less, 14, in the reference period. Police reported a total of 15 road deaths and four injuries, three of them seriously, in a total of more..

Dec 11 (Island) Tempers frayed during the budget debate, in Parliament, yesterday, with the Opposition MPs taking exception to the use of the parliament logo in some recent news reports on the proceedings of COPE. They asked Speaker to find out how that had happened and who was responsible. COPE Chairman Prof. Charitha Herath said information about the COPE discussion at issue had been taken from an official video. But the Opposition would have none of it. more..

Dec 11 (Island) The Mahara Prison violence has shocked the nation and stirred feelings of disbelief and indignation. A wide cross section of persons and groups; class, ethnic and political, want to know how so many inmates, under the twenty-four hour, protection and care of the state, could have been killed and injured, in one tragic incident. Since social stigma rates prisoners at the bottom of the grid, public outrage at violence against prisoners, tends to be muted. more..

Dec 11 (CT) We have come a long way from the brain racking sessions of playing Minesweeper on our home PCs in the early 2000s and ventured into a new age of digital entertainment where eSports are leading the way. The industry which is expected to reach a market value of US$ 1.6 billion by 2023 with revenues increasing at an average of 9% annually is hailed as the fastest growing form of entertainment around the world. more..

Dec 11 (Island) Britain – the first Western country to use the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine – importing it in all its dry ice maintaining a minus-several-degrees temperature, was used today, Dec 8, for the first time. The injectee, so to say, who will surely go down in history, not as remarkable as Rosa Parks or Margaret Thatcher but much more than Pavithradevi, is Margaret Keene who turns 91 next week. She was given the first shot in the Uni of Coventry hospital – lovely city, beautiful uni. more..

Dec 11 (NIA) India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, who visited Sri Lanka last week, met with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R Sampanthan at the India House for about half an hour before returning to New Delhi. It is learned that the two talked about the future of the provincial councils which would give some devolution to the Tamils and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which led to it and agreed to keep what they discussed secret owing to the sensitivity of the issue. more..

Dec 11 (CI) Laurie Evans delivered the first century of the LPL as his unbeaten 65-ball 108 powered the Colombo Kings to a six-run win over the Jaffna Stallions. Evans' innings was the quintessential slow-burner, a run-a-ball start followed by a gradual shifting of gears towards the business end of the innings. That it was played on a pitch where all other batsmen generally struggled made it all the more impressive. more..

Dec 11 (FT) The Angel Fund, the first of its kind in SL, has shortlisted its five early-stage startups for potential investment; Niftron, Traccular, Medica, Soulboner Clothing, and Ophir. This follows an intense application and selection process, spanning Sept, Oct and Nov 2020, which initially attracted 80 applications. The Angel Fund, launched earlier this year by the Lankan Angel Network (LAN), was established with the support of ecosystem development partner Ford Foundation more..

Dec 11 (USE) The US launched a new LKR 3.6 billion (USD 19.5 million) initiative to help small businesses and economically empower Sri Lankan women. Private Sector Development Project, which is funded through the USAID, will provide technical assistance and financing to small businesses in the tourism, technology, and commercial care industries. It will also help SL weather the economic impact of COVID-19 by providing much- needed financial assistance through which businesses more..

Dec 11 (CI) After winning the toss and choosing to bowl, Galle Gladiators' captain Bhanuka Rajapaksa could not have asked for a better start from his opening bowlers in this effective quarter-final. Mohammad Amir did not concede a run until the 12th ball he bowled, while Nuwan Thushara, the fast bowler with a slingy action that evokes Lasith Malinga, made two early breakthroughs. more..

Dec 11 (EN) State workers will get loans for housing at a 7% controlled rate and solar power at 4% will increase their income by 5,500 rupees a month on average, under budget proposals that are now effective, the Finance Ministry said. A controlled rate of 7% had been decreed for housing loans given by state banks to state workers. Under the proposal which is effective from Dec 10, state banks will reduce the rate on existing and new loans to 7% for loans between one and three million rupees. more..

Dec 11 (EN) The Anglican Church in Sri Lanka is drawing the attention of the authorities to the plight of two individuals who are incarcerated and deprived of their rights on World Human Rights day. In a statement issued today, December 10, the Bishops pointed to two cases which they see as emblematic. The Bishops said they are “particularly concerned about the human rights of two distinguished professionals who have been unacceptably deprived of their freedom and dignity. more..

Dec 11 (FT) Global financial giant Citi has cautioned Sri Lanka that its denial of a debt crisis shouldn’t be a strategy, and called for effective restructuring and boosting of income streams. In a latest assessment, Sri Lanka Economics and Strategy View, Citi Research said SL’s debt was on an unsustainable path, but the Govt appeared to be in denial. “While officials continue to mention their willingness to pay, we cannot see a credible more..

Dec 11 (CT) 20-year-old SL youth cap Dilshan Madushanka, left arm paceman and old boy of Vijayaba National School Hungama from Hambantota District, played his debut LPL match for Dambulla Viiking against Galle Gladiators in the Lanka Premier League on Wednesday. Dilshan started off by playing softball cricket and graduated to leather ball cricket at the request of school coach Ilangarathne. He represented the school under-15 team in 2014, and in 2015 came under more..