Mar 5 (CT) The National Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWSDB) has warned that several rivers getting diluted with sea water due to excessive sand mining which goes unabated across the country. The illiterate state of the people towards protecting the environment has been well and truly exploited as a result of the rat race in the construction industry. Every aspect of environment in the country has been threatened without any respect to Mother Nature. Beginning with deforestation in more..

Mar 5 (Island) Newly appointed local councillors should learn from the disastrous consequences of the bond scams the UNP had to face and refrain from getting involved in corrupt activities, election monitor, the Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) said. Addressing the newly appointed local councillors in Colombo CaFFE Executive Director, Rajith Keerthi Tennakoon said that the bond scams were the main reason why the govt had lost the recent local govt election badly. more..

Mar 5 (Island) PM Ranil Wickremesinghe�s economic advisers were against granting people social, economic and cultural rights as they hinder the implementation of neo-liberal economic policies, Law and Social Trust (LST) operations Director, Sandun Thudugala said. Currently, the fundamental rights chapter of the SL Constitution only recognizes civil and political rights, also known as negative rights, which are not to be subjected to actions of another person or a group; more..

Mar 5 (CI) Omitted from SL's squads towards the end of 2017, Kusal Mendis has not only recovered his Test form this year, he has also produced two outstanding innings in T20. His 53 off 27 and 70 off 42 were match-defining efforts, as SL swept the Bangladesh series 2-0 last month. He was not originally meant to be playing those games; only an injury to Kusal Perera saw him enter XI. It was a breakthrough series for Kusal, more..

Mar 5 (NR) The 50 suspects arrested and remanded over a protest in Rajanganaya have been released on bail. The order was issued by the Tambuttegama Magistrate�s Court this morning. Suspects were released on surety bail and were ordered to appear before the Tambuttegama Police on the last Sunday of every month. The group engaged in the protest on the 8th of Feb against the water of the Rajanganaya Reservoir being used for a project of a multinational company. more..

Mar 5 (MoD) Sri Lanka Coast Guard (SLCG) celebrated its 8th Anniversary on Sunday (4). Coast Guard Act No. 41 of 2009 was enacted by the Parliament on 09th July 2009 to incorporate the Department of Coast Guard. Its operational activities were ceremonially inaugurated on 4th March 2010. SL Coast Guard functions under the Ministry of Defence. It is a law enforcement agency at sea. SLCG has been empowered with legal authority to search and arrest ships, craft and more..

Mar 5 (CT) The arrival of Buddhist monk Galagoda Atte Gnanasara of BBS and Dan Priyasath who calls himself Savior of the Sinhalese to pay last respects to a Sinhala man who succumbed to injuries sustained when beaten up by a group of Muslims has raised fears of imminent communal clashes in Teldeniya and other places in the Kandy District. Sudarshana Gunawardena, Director General, Dept of Govt Information, said more..

Mar 5 (AD) Lalith Wickramaratne has been appointed as the Acting Municipal Commissioner of the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) with immediate effect, the Governor of the Western Province K.C Logeswaran said. The engineer currently serves as the Deputy Municipal Commissioner (Engineering Services) at the CMC. Mr V.K.A. Anura was removed from the position of Municipal Commissioner of Colombo on Friday (2). The report of the Presidential Commission more..

Mar 5 (SS) Mithun Perera couldn�t control his emotions, how much ever he tried. After a par on the 465-yard 18th hole � he also finished the day at par-70, the 31-year-old Sri Lankan dropped a tear or two after winning the Chennai Open Golf tournament at the Madras Gymkhana Club Annexe here on Sunday, before being congratulated by a handful of followers. The hard-earned one-stroke win (four-day total of 14-under 266) ended a four-year win-less streak. And it � his sixth PGTI title � more..

Mar 5 (DM) The GMOA said that several Indian medical officers who had visited the country for the Medicare Health Exhibition had conducted mobile clinics in Northern and Eastern provincies risking the lives of patients. GMOA Secretary Haritha Aluthge said the Indian medical officers had not obtained the necessary permission from the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC) to conduct mobile clinics in those provinces. more..

Mar 5 (Island) Police have not yet arrested Joint Opposition (JO) member and UPFA MP Prasanna Ranaweera for allegedly assaulting SLFP LG election candidate Jagath Gamage recently. A spokesperson for the PMU said the police had launched an operation to arrest Ranaweera and they were looking at several leads on his whereabouts. Ranaweera and one of his associates are accused of assaulting Gamage on February 28 at a birthday party of a mutual friend in Kiribathgoda. more..

Mar 5 (DM) The academic activities at 15 State universities and other institutions under the purview of the University Grants Commission (UGC) are at a standstill for the sixth consecutive day as at today as a result of the ongoing work stoppage by non-academic staff. University Trade Union Joint Committee Chairman Edward Malwattage said they were carrying out a work stoppage from Feb 28 demanding a salary increase and solutions to several other connected matters. more..

Mar 5 (EN) Central bank said it will cancel the licence of Central Investment and Finance (CIFL) and pay compensation to depositors who may be able to recover some of their dues when in the troubled finance company is liquidated. �All efforts made to revive the company through different strategies have failed,� statement said. �Central Bank wishes to emphasize that legal actions will be taken against the responsible more..

Mar 5 (CI) India going into the Nidahas T20I tri-series without many of their first-choice players has somewhat levelled the playing field. Captain Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Hardik Pandya and Kuldeep Yadav have all been rested. Sri Lanka will also miss some of their key players: Angelo Mathews, Asela Gunaratne and fast bowler Shehan Madushanka, who bagged a hat-trick on ODI debut in Bangladesh, are unavailable through injury. more..

Mar 5 (NR) President Maithripala Sirisena has instructed the police to conduct a transparent and independent investigation into the unrest reported in Kandy this afternoon. Police curfew has been imposed in the Kandy administrative district with immediate effect. Police Media Spokesman SP Ruwan Gunasekara speaking to NewsRadio said police curfew will be in place till 6 tomorrow morning. Protests triggered after an accident killed one person in the Kandy area. more..

Mar 5 (Xinhua) Sri Lanka's Health Ministry said on Monday it would soon seek cabinet approval to raise the age limit of cigarette sale to adults from 18 to 21 years. Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said that the proposals would soon be drafted, and following cabinet approval, cigarette sales would be banned to anyone below the age of 21 years. He said steps were also being taken to ban the sale of cigarettes near schools more..

Mar 5 (Island) Veteran Sinhala novelist Arawwala Nandimithra passed away yesterday after a brief illness. He was 78. Born on June 5, 1939, Nandimithra wrote several novels and short stories which won state literary prizes. Nandimithra�s first collection of short stories titled Kaya Misa Sitha Nethi Dana was published in 1965. His novel Maldeniye Simiyon was later made into an award winning film by veteran director DB Nishalsinghe. Veteran actress Anjoa Weerasinghe won more..

Mar 5 (DM) The UNP has reportedly decided to re-nominate Regional Development Minister Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka as Law and Order Minister, it is learnt. When the UNP nominated him to the post the first time it was turned down by President Maithripala Sirisena. Thereafter, the UNP sought to assign the subject to another member of the party but no one was ready to accept it. Against this backdrop, the party had taken a decision to re-submit his name to the President. more..

Mar 5 (SL) More than one-third of female homicides in Sri Lanka are related to intimate partner violence, and 69% of such incidences go unreported, a study revealed. UNFPA conducted the first study of its kind in SL to understand the contributory factors of unnatural deaths from a gender perspective. Conducted with the University of Kelaniya, the study focused on unnatural female deaths in five provinces in the country. more..

Mar 5 (DN) A Fundamental Rights petition filed by a person who wishes to keep his HIV status undisclosed to the public, was dismissed by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held that the petitioner failed to prove the allegation that SriLankan Airlines did not offer him employment on the basis that he was a HIV positive person. Attorney Kamani Jinadasa on behalf of the victim (X) filed this petition seeking an order directing Sri Lankan Airlines to re-instate him as more..

Mar 5 (EN) Central Bank said it does not expect an increase in market interest rates in the near term, contrary to speculation, with economic growth below potential, leaving space for demand to expand without fuelling inflationary pressures. �... the general public is advised not to be misled by false media reports on Central Bank�s expectations on future behaviour of interest rates,� it said in a statement, responding to media reports claiming that CB expects a rise in domestic interest rates. more..

Mar 5 (DM) Govt has contrasting ways of dealing with public demonstrations in the Northern Province and the other parts of the country, SLPP Head Prof. G.L. Peiris said today. He asked as to why the government was silent on the protest in Mullaitivu where some people motivated by TNA were demanding 600 acres of land at Wattuwakal be distributed among original owners. However, he said the Police had different ways of dealing with more..

Mar 6 (CT) Sri Lanka is proud of its decades long, legacy of democracy. We have changed our govts, almost every five years in the first three decades. The messenger; guardian and implementer of democracy is the political party, and one assumes the political parties would ensure sustenance of democracy in the country as well as in the political party system. There can be no doubt those parties, which function as the elementary units in a competitive democracy, must be democratic more..

Mar 6 (Island) It is a unwritten rule of coalition democracies the world over that whenever there is a political crisis for a ruling combine, it would be from within. Infighting often renders the real Opposition irrelevant, though not entirely irreverent. If anything, such infighting ends up making the real Opposition more relevant in the end, and the voter more reverent about the Opposition than any or all of the ruling combine�s partners, big and small. Until the initiative goes back to the voter, more..

Mar 6 (SO) Even though the TNA finished as the single largest Tamil political party and won the second highest number of local councils nationally, the recent Local Authorities Elections marked a decisive low point in the party�s history. Considering absolute figures � i.e. discounting the increase in total votes � TNA polled a shattering 34 percent fewer votes across the north-east than it did in the General Election of 2015. more..

Mar 6 (ST) Who runs the British Govt? Is it the prime minister and the elected representatives of the Conservative Party or nondescript groups of minority refugees and extremists with dubious and violent backgrounds whose highly raucous demonstrations have scared the British authorities to cave into their demands? But it is good to remember that what seems is not always what is in reality. Over in Sri Lanka the yahapalana govt proudly claimed it had won over the west and more..

Mar 6 (CT) With money playing a more and more critical role in the lives of people world over, the road to political power is being sought after as the short cut to personal achievement. Besides, power at the top brings with it an enormous hold over resources that are both public and private. Men and women are at your feet and if you know the art, you are in Nirvanic bless. Life can never be better and abusing the right of a private individual to his own life and his own enjoyment becomes a trifle too easy. more..

Mar 6 (CT) NPC Chairman and Deputy General Secretary of ITAK, C.V.K. Sivagnanam commenting on the 2-year term extension given at the last UNHRC to implement the resolution 30/1 of Oct 2015 said, "I want to make it clear that we have never agreed for the grant of time at the UNHRC. It is a wrong picture that is being presented. No! We have not agreed for the extension. more..

Mar 6 (CT) The recent Cabinet reshuffle is neither a farce nor a joke. This is a matter of great concern when one implicated over our country's biggest bank heist, becomes Minister of Law & Order. Circumstantial evidence against Ranil Wickremesinghe stacks high, for unprecedentedly taking the CB under him from the Finance Ministry and appointing Arjuna Mahendran as the CB Governor, despite Prez's protests. He pledged personal responsibility for Mahendran. more..

Mar 6 (Island) It is being claimed in some quarters that the US might become a Third World country someday. This view, however, has not gained currency among serious political commentators, who dismiss it as mere wishful thinking of the anti-American bloc. They may be right. But, those doomsayers may be proven right if President Donald Trump�s wish comes true; he is reported to have said at a Republican fundraiser the other day that the US should consider taking a leaf out of more..

Mar 6 (CT) Volatility of voter behaviour cannot be discounted when election results are analysed for 2010, 2015 and 2018. This is a belated post-mortem of LG elections, due to unavoidable circumstances, nevertheless with a final focus on the present crisis in good governance. Within these eight years, the voter behaviour has fluctuated from one end to the other or between devil and the deep blue sea. This is not to blame the voters for any inconsistency, irrationality or opportunism, more..

Mar 6 (ST) The post LG election period of political confusion, uncertainty and partial reshuffling of the cabinet last Sunday has demonstrated that the country�s leadership has no firm resolve to address the country�s critical economic issues. Consequently, the economy could be heading for an economic crisis. Govt must act quickly to implement economic policies that address fundamental economic issues and regain its popularity. It should not compromise on the needed economic more..

Mar 6 (CT) National Economic Council (NEC) headed by Prez Sirisena has taken a drastic and decisive move by appointing a high powered committee, including PM Wickremesinghe, to manage the economy and will meet bi-annually to implement urgent fast tract policies in/for the next two years, towards victory in the areas of economy and governance; and for winning the Provincial, General & Prez Elections, due before 2020. more..

Mar 6 (Island) Stand-in captain Dinesh Chandimal believes the momentum the team gained by winning across all three formats during the recent tour of Bangladesh will stand in good stead for Sri Lanka in the tri-nation Nidhas Trophy tournament. T-20 competition gets underway today with SL taking on India in the curtain-raiser at RPS. "The last couple of years we have been struggling. Bangladesh series gave us good momentum and we look forward to building on from that during Nidhas Trophy more..

Mar 6 (Island) SL�s Head Coach Chandika Hathurusingha attributed clear description of roles for each of his players as the reason for his team�s success in the recent tour to Bangladesh and he was hopeful that the team will be able to carry the momentum forward during the tri-nation Nidhas Trophy. Sri Lanka will take on India in the curtain-raiser of the tournament at RPS this evening at 7pm. "The series win in Bangladesh has definitely given us the confidence to repeat what we did. more..

Mar 6 (ST) It has been found that cyber-crimes across the world have shot up drastically in the past few years compromising the security of many organisations. According to the Economic Crime Survey data, cyber-crimes have now jumped to the second place globally with hackers being available to extract vulnerable and confidential information from computers scattered across the globe for criminal activity and more..

Mar 6 (CT) Petition filed in connection with the deaths of 27 inmates of the Welikada Prison, following a conflict in Nov 2012, was dismissed by the Court of Appeal yesterday, as the investigation was nearly complete. Senior State Counsel Madhawa Tennekoon, appearing for the Attorney General, told the Court that the investigation into the case was nearing completion, and that therefore there was no necessity to continue with the case. Bench after weighing the pros and cons more..

Mar 6 (Island) As an integral part of new trade policy, while sustaining and ensuring growth in the traditional two major markets, namely U.S. and EU, SL would negotiate Free Trade Agreements with emerging South Asia and Far Eastern countries, thus linking to the global production and value chains. Accordingly, Sri Lanka has embarked upon negotiations on FTAs with India, China & S'pore. Negotiations with Singapore were concluded and Agreement was signed on Jan 23; more..