Despite possessing enviable social indicators at the time of Independence in 1948, Sri Lanka, at 75, is a “failed state”, former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga said on Sunday.

Nine inmates who were undergoing Ramadan fasting have escaped from the Thaldena Open Prison Rehabilitation Centre in Badulla, the Prisons Spokesman said.

An Australian national woman has been killed and her daughter and another injured after a car they were travelling toppled down a precipice at Dara Wanguwa in Hemmathagama.

The 06 individuals who were arrested yesterday (April 16) on international waters off the southern coast of Sri Lanka with 179 kilograms and 654 grams of heroin valued at Rs. 3.5 billion and their multi-day fishing trawler have been brought to the Galle harbour this morning (April 17), the Navy Spokesman said.

Bangladesh has extended the repayment period of Sri Lanka’s $200 million loan it had given by six more months.

The new Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) proposed by the Sri Lankan Government, designed to replace the existing Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) of 1979, threatens to further exacerbate restrictions on the right to assembly and gravely curtail freedom of expression and press freedom, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said in a statement.

In response to the publication of the draft text of the proposed Anti-Terrorism Act by the Sri Lankan government, Amnesty International (AI) Asia Advocacy Director Carolyn Nash said that Biden- administration need to send a clear message to President Ranil Wickremesinghe that this law must be overhauled entirely or scrapped altogether.

State Minister of Finance Ranjith Siyambalapitiya was admitted to the Karawanella Base Hospital with minor injuries after his vehicle skidded off the road and crashed against a parapet wall at Karawanella area of Ruwanwella on the Kegalle – Avissawella main road.

Sri Lanka makes significant progress in restructuring its debt and solving the economic crisis at the 2023 spring meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC.

The Mumbai Police have arrested two foreigners for allegedly swapping their boarding passes at the airport to travel to two different countries, the news agency PTI reported on Thursday.

A committee of Sri Lanka’s international private creditors sent its first debt rework proposal to the country’s authorities regarding over $12 billion in bonds outstanding, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

The spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China Wang Wenbin has reaffirmed their commitment towards Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring process.

Japan, India and France on Thursday announced a common platform for talks among bilateral creditors to coordinate restructuring of Sri Lanka’s debt, a move they hope would serve as a model for solving the debt woes of middle-income economies.

Sri Lanka’s Department of Government Printing has stopped all printing processes related to the 2023 Local Government (LG) election.