Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

Sri Lanka`s New `High-speed` Track a Total Failure: Railway Union Says
Thu, 17 February 2011 06:25

(NIDAHASA News) Newly launched Sri Lanka`s first `high-speed` locomotive is not truly high-speed, Railway Employees` Common Union says.

The refurbished Galle-Matara railway line, which claimed to be capable of 100 KmpH speed, was opened on Thursday (16) by Transport Minister. However according to union, the first train as well as test train recorded only 80 KmpH even without passengers, union said.

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LK Information 24 Feb 2010 12:35:04 GMT Report for Abuse
Lasantha was killed by a unit operating directly under sarath fonseka...

the hit man who took him down was a person who was assigned to a colombo intel unit...they were mis breifed as this being a legitimate target,important for national security considerations..

in retrospect its clear that the assassination was a small block of fonseka`s Hollywood masterpiece...

By Channaka de Silva

West Indies who had a disappointing tour of Sri Lanka are highly unlikely to return for a postponed One Day International (ODI) series in January next year.

Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) inside sources said that the West Indies were thoroughly disgusted with the shabby way they had been treated after they were subjected to much inconvenience despite their protests.

Even the senior Sri Lanka players have protested about playing the series just days before the World Cup as it would be a great risk. If a key player gets injured he would not stand a chance to recover, they had pointed out.

`This video will help show whether that other video was verifiable, credible or not,` Sam Zarifi told Channel 4 News.

`Perhaps the most important part of what we`ve seen with this new video is there are more prisoners who seem to have been killed, there are more army personnel who are present.

`Very troublingly there are indications that deserved to be looked at about possible sexual violence. At least two of the bodies seen in this video seem to be of women, prisoners of war and some of the back and forth chatter is of a sexual nature.`

Perhaps General Fonseka would like to comment on these photos.

Ashis Ray, TNN, Nov 5, 2010, 12.57am IST

LONDON: In an embarrassing turn of events, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse has been forced to cancel his proposed visit to Britain following fears that he might be arrested for alleged war crimes under British law. Rajapakse`s provisional engagements included an address to the Oxford Union, and it`s learnt that certain Sri Lankan Tamil organisations were planning to move court for his arrest.

This is the address:

Mr. Sarath Fonseka,
The Prisoner Number 0/22032,
Ward `S `,
c/o, The Prison Commissioner
Welikada Prison,
Baseline Road,
Colombo 08, SRI LANKA

HORRIBLE toilets. Stagnant puddles buzzing with dengue-spreading mosquitoes. Collapsing masonry. Lax security. A terrorist attack. India`s preparations for the 72-nation Commonwealth games, which are scheduled to open in Delhi on October 3rd, have not won favourable reviews. Commonfilth , was one of the kinder British tabloid headlines. At best assuming that the organisers make a last-minute dash to spruce things up the Delhi games will be remembered as a shambles. The contrast with China`s practically flawless hosting of the Olympic games in 2008 could hardly be starker. Many people will draw the wrong lesson from this.

Sri Lanka received more than $6.3 billion of orders for a global sale of $1 billion in bonds to help repay debt and rebuild after the end of three decades of civil war.

The October 2020 securities were sold to yield 6.25 percent, or 373 basis points more than similar-maturity U.S. Treasuries, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The securities were marketed to investors at an indicative yield of 6.5 percent, according to two investors briefed about the sale. Bank of America Corp., HSBC Holdings Plc and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc managed the issue, assisted by Bank of Ceylon.

The UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic is a student clinical program at American University`s Washington College of Law, under the supervision of Ali Beydoun, supervising attorney and director of the clinic, and supervising attorney Erin Louise Palmer.

UNROW`s story began in 2000 when five Texas trial lawyers - Walter Umphrey, Harold Nix, Wayne Reaud, John O`Quinn, and John Eddie Williams (UNROW) - made gifts totaling $2 million to Washington College of Law.

Wednesday, 22 September 2010 02:46

By Sandun A. Jayasekera

The Central Bank will introduce a Deposit Insurance Scheme (DIS) to protect 13 million small scale depositors with deposits of Rs. 200,000 or less at licensed and registered commercial banks and registered financial institutions from October 1, Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal said.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mirror yesterday, Mr. Cabraal said some 23 commercial banks, nine specialized banks and 36 finance companies will come under the DIS and deposits below Rs. 200,000 will be insured to ensure the repayment of deposits in an event of the bank or the finance company collapsing. We repay only for the savings deposited at registered or licensed finance companies and banks as they are considered legitimately established financial institutions. Sri Lanka did not have a scheme of this nature up to now and this we expect will boost private savings among the public. Sri Lanka expects to raise the rate of deposits to a minimum 30% of the GDP from current 18% in the next six years in order to realize our development goals, Mr. Cabraal emphasized.

Aafia Siddiqui (born March 2, 1972, in Karachi, Pakistan) is an American-educated Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist. Her father, Muhammad Salay Siddiqui, was a British-trained neurosurgeon, and her mothers_day.jsp' class=black>mother, Ismet (n e Faroochi), is a now-retired Islamic teacher, social worker and charity volunteer who at one time was a member of Pakistan`s parliament.[29] Her brother is an architect who lives in Texas her sister, Fowzia, is a Harvard-trained neurologist who worked at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore[30] and taught at Johns Hopkins University before she returned to Pakistan.

By 2020, the Urban Development Authority envisions a rationalized Colombo, activities divided into zones, markets in certain areas and squatters moved out so valuable land can be leased to developers. This plan includes redoing the chaotic zoning of the city and taking direct Ministry of Defence control of vital areas, including the historic and future downtown.

The port city of Colombo has been besieged by the Portugese, the Dutch, the British and finally the terrorist threat of the LTTE. The latter group never occupied the city, but they did target it with waves of suicide bombers, fracturing its natural development. Now, one year after wars end, the architect of the LTTE`s demise is planning the new city of Colombo.

* The Guardian, Saturday 14 June 2008


My mothers_day.jsp' class=black>mother was born in Sri Lanka on March 18 1920. Seventy-five troubled years later, in the early hours of a September morning in 1995, I received a phone call from a London hospital informing me of her death. Until that dawn call that changed everything forever, I had not imagined life without her. She had gone to bed as usual the night before, but suffered a massive heart attack.

`The day before I left Sri Lanka, I went down to the beach at Mount Lavinia. There are three rocks close to the sand and, using a penknife, I carved my name on one of them. Roma Chrysostom, Colombo, Ceylon, Asia. The World. The Universe. I was a 10-year-old half-Tamil, half-Sinhalese girl on her way to the UK. What followed was not what I expected. Britain in the Sixties was not a place that had much patience with a girl like me living with my family in a depressed part of London. Long before I took my A-levels in English, I was aware that survival depended on the need to integrate into the life of my host country. So out went the Asian accent, the memories of frangipani, and all desire to wear a sari. `