Category: Local News

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will highlight the importance of development and human rights during visits next week to Sri Lanka and Myanmar, two legs of a five-stop Asia tour, his spokesman said Thursday.

Sri Lanka is seeking a consortium that must include a company from the Indian subcontinent to bid for a $400 million contract to build a port terminal, the ports minister said on Thursday.

Chief Minister of Northern Province, C.V. Vigneswaran, has outlined the economic goals of his largely rural province and set the parameters within which economic development projects should be conceived.

A man’s body believed to be that of the missing businessman, Mohamed Sakeem Sulaiman, was found on the Hemmathagama Road in Rukulagama in Mawanella yesterday evening, police sources said.

Sri Lanka’s new government is drafting reforms aimed at simplifying taxes, widening the tax base and increasing compliance, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said on Wednesday.

The new legislation for the formation of the WP Megapolis Authority, which will remove many obstacles for development, will be brought in soon.

The Sri Lankan rupee held steady for a seventh straight session on Tuesday, with dealers hesitating to trade in the local currency below 145.50 per dollar anticipating central bank intervention to defend the currency, dealers said.

The Speaker of Parliament Karu Jayasuriya has signed the Bill establishing the Office of Missing Persons, the Speaker’s Office said.

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday said nobody had a right to prevent the formation of new political parties.

The United States has backed out of an undertaking to medically examine former combatants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who had allegedly been injected with a poisonous drug when they were in detention or undergoing rehabilitation in camps.

The UN’s cultural agency has denied reports it is considering taking an ancient Sri Lankan cave temple off a list of world heritage sites, as a local conservation official Saturday renewed fears about its status.

INDIA: Senior officials of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) on Sunday faced embarrassment as the visiting Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena was forced to wait in his car as the driver did not turn up in time.

Import tax on Big Onions has been increased from Rs 25 to 40 per kg with immediate effect, the Finance Ministry said.

President Maithripala Sirisena emphasizes that he would not let those who crowned with the fraud, corruption, waste and robbery to rule this country again.

An atmosphere conducive to find a permanent political solution to the Sri Lankan Tamil issue is emerging now and it is the moral responsibility of the Tamil diaspora to join in reconstruction efforts, according to a group of Tamil MPs from the island nation.

Chennai: The future of 55 Sri Lankan Tamil children aged between 11 and 18 hangs in balance as the Kancheepuram district administration has launched probe into complaints that they were falsely labelled as refugees and war survivors to get admission in government and private schools at Acharapakkam in the district.