Rights groups are appealing to authorities in the UAE not to deport Sri Lanka journalist Rathimohan Lohini. The former presenter for a rebel-run Tamil TV channel, who is in Dubai, is facing expulsion despite having UN refugee status.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Ms Lohini, an ethnic Tamil, "would be at grave risk of torture" if sent back.

Sri Lanka's army defeated the separatist Tamil Tigers in May 2009, ending 26 years of brutal civil war.

A person sustained serious injuries and was hospitalised following a shooting that took place in the Kaluganaarawa area in Dhambagalla, Moneragala.

Police say that an argument over the purchase of maize had escalated and had lead to the shooting.

Thirty-five-year-old D.M.Ravi Senadheera, a father of one was seriously injured in the shooting.

 

General Secretary of the Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, Ananda Palltha says that there is a possibility of fuel prices in the country reducing in comparison with prices in the world market.

He made this statement at a media briefing held in Colombo on Wednesday.

"We urge the government to return to the price formula which was in place on the 12th of February in 2011 and 2012. The CPC can sell a litre of petrol for 137 rupees without an issue."

United National Party Parliamentarian Ravi Karunanayake speaking in Parliament  focussed on the issues that have arisen when providing material for school uniforms.UNP MP Ravi Karunanayake :
''Minister, the Education Ministry has estimated that a sum of 4800 million rupees will be spent for such programme. Does this mean that you will  be providing school uniforms to the entire country.''
Minister Bandula Gunawardena:
''If you can provide me with details of a schools that has not receive

The Registration of Persons Department has proposed to bring down the present age limit for individuals to obtain National Identity Cards from 16 to 15 years, officials said yesterday.

The Department has proposed to implement this decision along with the introduction of electronic NICs. The Department has sought to amend the Persons Registration Act to accommodate this proposal.  The Act, originally enacted in 1968, was amended twice in 1971.

The nine men and two women in Colombo's Welikada prison want Indian authorities to speed up the legal formalities so that they can be moved to Indian jails to complete their sentences.

Of the 11, one man has been in Welikada for 19 long years. The least time an Indian prisoner has spent in the jail is seven-and-a-half years.

All the Indians jailed in Sri Lanka are from poor families, dominantly from Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and were mainly accused of smuggling drugs and other contraband to Colombo.

Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa yesterday said that US Ambassador Michele J. Sison was either ignorant of the post-war situation in the country or chose to ignore it in deeping with the US agenda.

Ambassador Sisons recent speech at the Galle Face Hotel, Colombo was meant to strengthen those still pursuing a separatist agenda, both here and abroad, Defence Secretary Rajapaksa told The Island.

However the ideology of Marxism could create in a capitalist society an enclave of conscious beings, through revolutionary praxis. Thus, one who understands and gets involved in conscious revolutionary practice, can come out of alienation to see the world as it is. It was Buddha who understood first, the human ability to go beyond common sense and see the world through the rule of Uthpatha, Thithi, Banga or the rule of negation. That was long before Hegel or Marx. Any human who could go against the current, and comprehensively look at th

A top Israeli scholar-analyst, who served as adviser to several Prime Ministers, has described Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka's book on Fidel Castro as a 'fascinating book' that 'deserves attention by all concerned with global norms' in a review posted in January 2013 on Amazon.com.

 

Yehezkel Dror, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was Senior Policy Planning and Analysis Adviser with the Israeli Ministry of Defence, a consultant of the Israeli Cabinet Offi

Last year, 36 schools were closed due to insufficient number of student found in them, which seriously questioned the viability of continuity, Minister of Education Bandula Gunawardena told the Parliament yesterday, in response to a question raised by United National Party MP Akila Kariyawasam.

Clarifying the Government policy to revolutionise the school education in par with the ‘Mahinda Chinthana’ political manifesto, Minister stated that 1,000 schools were identified and will be amalgamated and joined to a secon