Category: Local News

(Reuters) – China was Sri Lanka’s top commercial lender and foreign direct investor in the first nine months of 2013, government data showed on Tuesday, as the island nation turns away from Western nations critical of its human rights record. China committed $517.9 million in commercial loans, around 39 percent of the $1.32 billion total […]

Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal. (File photo) The U.S. has warned Sri Lanka that the patience of the international community could wear thin if the Rajapaksa Government does not take steps to address the issue of human rights, accountability and reconciliation process. […]

A $400 million Sri Lankan resort and casino complex planned by Australia’s Crown Resorts Ltd faces additional delays and is unlikely to be approved before the end of the year, a top government official said. […]

Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne told Parliament that he had ordered his staff and secretaries not to issue letters, on his behalf, hereafter. […]

Sri Lanka ranked 91st place on Transparency International’s corruption perception index for 2013, according to a report released on Tuesday. […]

JVP Parliamentary Group leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake, yesterday in Parliament, demanded to know from the government what action had been taken with regard to a person who had sent a request to the Customs, from the Prime Minister’s office, to release a container load of heroin imported to the country from Karachi. […]

An underworld leader, Chinthaka Wasantha, known as Ketayam Chinthaka, who is the main suspect in the killing of a policeman and his wife in Kamburupitiya was shot dead during a confrontation with Special Task Force personnel in Nigala last night, police said. […]

The total number of vehicles registered during the nine months ending September 30 2013, declined 23 percent to 244,361 from 316,820 in the same period last year. Import of vehicles also fell 20 percent to 235,434 from 292,512 last year, the Treasury said. […]

– by Shenali D. Waduge – At some stage or the other the people of Sri Lanka would need to sit down and carefully deliberate over exactly what and who contributed and continues to contribute towards steadily reversing the great victory of the Ranaviru in defeating terrorism in Sri Lanka in May 2009.  Some agreements that […]

The Presidential Media Unit said a short while ago that the Defence Ministry had abolished the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) with effect from November 1. The MCNS was headed by Lakshman Hulugalle. […]

Sri Lanka customs officers at the Katunayake International Airport today arrested an individual attempting smuggle four pieces of gold out of the country by concealing them in his rectal cavity. […]

An ancient Buddha statue that had been stolen from the Bibile Rajamaha Viharaya and concealed in a muddy area near a canal in Uduwela, had been unearthed by a special police team. […]

Senior DIG of the Eastern Division, Poojitha Jayasundara has been appointed as the senior DIG of the North, with effective from 03December, the police headquarters announced. […]

Police say a 71-year-old Sri Lankan immigrant who worked as a New York Police Department traffic enforcement agent had been killed by a truck as it pulled away from a parking spot in midtown Manhattan. […]

A motorcyclist who illegally entered the Southern Expressway through the Welipenna Interchange has been hospitalized after colliding with a van this morning, police said. […]

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Friday urged Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa to take immediate action on the Home Ministry’s communication to her seeking the State government’s assistance on the whereabouts of an LTTE operative, a Catholic Christian priest. […]