Pakistan Navy Ship SAIF is on a goodwill visit to the Trincomalee port from 14-17 May 2013, this visit signifies the strong diplomatic, cultural and military ties between Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

The Archeology Department is currently in the process preparing replicas of every historical artifact in the country.

Despite inflated figures claimed by the likes of the Central Bank and the Board of Investment (BoI) about the foreign direct investments (FDIs) coming into the country, there has been a massive reduction in the investments entering the country.

The Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) has alleged that Minister Wimal Weerawansa may have links with Shiva Sena in India.General Secretary of the BBS Ven. Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero says that Minister Weerawansa’s wife is working with a Buddhist monk in Padukka who is funded by the Shiva Sena.

Twenty-four-year-old Bai Lu was just four days into her new job as a journalist at the Urumqi Evening Post when she was killed. She and her colleague, Chen Aiying, were struck by a bulldozer while reporting at a major construction project on April 18 in the city of Urumqi in Xinjiang province. Chen was seriously injured.

The Associated Press on Monday said the U.S. government secretly seized telephone records of AP offices and reporters for a two-month period in 2012, describing the acts as a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news-gathering operations.

Heavy monsoon rains and a tropical cyclone threaten the lives of tens of thousands of displaced persons in western Myanmar unless the authorities immediately step up efforts to protect them, Amnesty International said.

Finance Ministry Secretary Dr. P.B. Jayasundera has overruled an order issued by MP Namal Rajapaksa to remove the Chairman of National Lotteries Board, Chaminda Athuluwage, who has been accused of many corrupt and fraudulent cases. Dr. Jayasundera has ordered not to remove Athuluwage.

The government it is learnt is gearing to purchase 50 limousines from UK’s Rolls Royce Company for the heads of state who are to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled to be held in Colombo from November 15th to 17th.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that all media in the country should be under the direct or indirect control of the government by the end of 2013. He has said that it was important since 2014 would be apolitically decisive year.

The Buckingham palace has announced that ‘Her Majesty the Queen’ will not be attending this year’s Commonwealth summit, scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka, as the palace reviews her long-haul travel. However, when questioned by Alex Thompson, Chief Correspondent of ‘Channel 4’, a palace spokesperson said that “no single long-haul flight is under reconsideration apart from the Sri Lankan one”, giving a different discourse to the official explanation of Queen’s non-attendance.

Canada remains the sole country threatening to boycott or send a low level delegation to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka in November after Britain and Australia confirmed they would be represented at the highest level.

David Burrowes leads a Parliamentary debate calling on the Government to press the Burmese Government to improve their human rights record and give full rights and citizenship to religious and ethnic minorities, most notably to the Rohingya Muslims in Arakan state.

Anti-corruption activist and political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi has lent his support to Sri Lankan Tamils, who are living in hostile conditions under a Sinhalese racist government that massacred an estimated 1 lakh Tamils during the last stages of the 3-decade long civil war with the Tamil rebels that ended in May 2009.

Aidan Wright has claimed victory in two out of three races in the first round of the Formula Masters China Series in Zhuhai over the weekend. It was a wet weekend and after dominating the practice sessions, Wright looked set to impress in qualifying. However, the rain played havoc with his plans and caused him to spin off the track ending in a disappointing start position of 3rd and 6th respectively.

The Matale mass grave issue was back in the limelight last week with families of several persons who had gone missing in the Matale area during the 1988-1989 period requesting courts to carry out investigations to determine whether remains of their loved ones are among the skeletal remains unearthed from the mass grave.

MAE LA REFUGEE CAMP, Thailand (AP) - Since the day she was born, 20-year-old Naw Lawnadoo has known almost nothing of the world beyond the fence and guard posts that hem her in with 45,000 others - ethnic minorities from Myanmar and those like her who were born and raised in the Mae La refugee camp in neighboring Thailand.

Prevention of torture, and holding people to account for complicity in torture, is one crucial concern in the present human rights situation in Sri Lanka. Clinicians and their professional bodies should play a key role in this, although they may be or feel threatened if they do.

Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming have hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said Friday.

Before the war began, Kazal was in love with her neighbour in Homs. "He was 20 years old and I dreamed of marrying him one day," she says. "I never thought I would marry someone I didn't love, but my family and I have been through some hard times since coming to Amman."

With a view to freeing up Russia from supplier liability, charges of theft and abject project failure, the Indian nuclear establishment has begun to claim that the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) is not a Russian turnkey project.

Mother's day

I am very thankful that there has been a day designated as Mothers day to help remind us to appreciate our mothers. Many times they are overlooked and we don’t give them the praise that they deserve for all their hard work they do day in and day out.

FOUR years ago this week, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam announced that their struggle for an independent homeland in northern Sri Lanka had “reached its bitter end.” The group had been fighting on behalf of the Tamil people for more than a quarter-century, and its defeat was absolute.

As Delhi debated and discussed the issue of women’s rights and safety during the past three months, barely four kilometres from Parliament, the seat of Indian democracy, a 19-year-old girl was kept confined within a small cavity in the walls of a brothel at G.B. Road. During this period she was continuously raped – usually by over a dozen men from morning to night.

Former Army Commander and Leader of the Democratic Party, Sarath Fonseka says that the suicide attack on him was carried out with the knowledge of the President and Gotabhaya.

The broad trade union front that declared May 21st as day of protest with the trade unions deciding to go on a Token Strike against electricity price increases, have run into unexpected opposition from Dr. Vikramabahu and his United Federation of Labour deciding they will not support strike action, if the JVP is there in the front.

More than 125,000 Rohingya living in dire conditions after fleeing ethnic violence in western Myanmar face a humanitarian catastrophe as the monsoon approaches, a rights group has warned.

It will be four years on the 18th May 2013 since the war on the Tamil people ended. Having ended the war, massacring more than 40,000 people in just the last few weeks, the Sri Lankan state had continued its agenda of ethnically cleansing the Homeland of the Tamil people, in the North and East of the island.

This is the back of a Tamil man, photographed in London soon after he arrived here and just before he claimed asylum this year. I examined him recently. The more nearly healed scars I saw correspond precisely to the fresher, scabbed injuries visible in the picture. The burns are pretty blatant.