Jul 4 (NR) A special discussion was held today between Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa and former Prez and Chairman of the SLFP Maithripala Sirisena. The discussion took place at the office of the Opposition Leader at Colombo 7. Proposed constitutional reforms and several other matters were reportedly discussed. Speaking to media after talks, Opposition Leader Premadasa said the liquidity of the local banking system must be secured, if the economy is to be safeguarded. more..

Jul 4 (ANI) Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin requested External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to take appropriate action for the immediate release of 12 Indian fishermen arrested by the SL Navy. In a letter to EAM, Chief Minister said, "This arrest intimidates the fisherfolk of TN and is also likely to create a sense of insecurity and fear in the coastal areas of the State. I, therefore, request you to take up this matter through appropriate diplomatic channels to secure the immediate release more..

Jul 4 (TM) Media & social media are circulating baseless and fake news about me and my family being involved in a fuel deal, calling each other a hora and I want to nullify these accusations, says MP Namal Rajapaksa. �None of my family members and I have been involved in any fuel deals. We should stop the finger- pointing and the blame game, instead work together in unity for one goal, which is to bring our country out of this crisis. We should stop this trend of calling each other Hora. more..

Jul 4 (AD) Minister Kanchana Wijesekera says he has received a letter from the Public Utilities Commission of SL (PUCSL) recommending to conduct an inquiry in to the power interruption due to CEB union action on 9th of June. He said according to the letter received this morning, the PUCSL has concluded that a cost of Rs. 320 million had been incurred by operating fuel power plants when Hydro power could have been generated on the same day. In a tweet, the minister added that more..

Jul 4 (DM) Prez Rajapaksa was not even to be seen when the country is facing the worst crisis in its history, MP Wimal Weerawansa said. He urged the govt to form an all-party govt at least now and formulate a programme to win confidence - locally and internationally. He told Parliament that the country is under a self-imposed curfew due to the fuel crisis and that there was no solution in sight to these burning issues. more..

Jul 4 (AD) Education Minister Susil Premajayantha says that the GCE A/L examination could be delayed by one month. Speaking in the Parliament, the Minister of Education also said that the results of the 2021 A/L examination are to be released on the 15th of August. He said that arrangements have been made to conduct the 2022 GCE A/L exam in November this year and it is a month later than previously informed, as it is expected to release the last year�s results in August. more..

Jul 4 (EN) Chief administrative officer at a Pradeshiya Sabha was stabbed to death at her residence, police said. The official, attached to the Lankapura PS in the north central district of Polonnaruwa, had been attacked by an unknown assailant around 2.45am on Monday (4). The victim had sustained critical injuries to the head and had succumbed to her wounds en route to hospital. The victim�s husband and two children had been asleep in the house, & husband had seen a person more..

Jul 4 (TM) A teacher at a school in Mullaitivu has been remanded on charges of the extortion of eight underage female students of the same school, of which two, aged 13 and 17 (now aged 19), were allegedly raped while unconscious. This form of extortion is referred to as sextortion, which is the practice of extorting money or sexual favours from someone by threatening to reveal evidence of their sexual activity. more..

Jul 4 (TM) More than one detainee had been assaulted with electric wires and rods as a form of punishment at the Kandakadu Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre, which eventually led to the death of one detainee last Tuesday and the escape of over 500 inmates. Well-placed sources said that the assault on the inmate at Kandakadu last week was not an isolated incident, and that four to five instructors at the rehabilitation centre have been known to punish inmates using wires & rods, more..

Jul 4 (DM) Defence Ministry requests the public not to panic about the intelligence information of a purported terrorist attack which is currently circulating in the social media. While issuing a statement the defence ministry said a letter sent by the IGP to the Defence Secretary regarding the disclosure of a purported terrorist attack that may be carried out on July 5 and 6, evoking Black July, was taken up into consideration based on unconfirmed info received through intelligence sources. more..

Jul 5 (DM) Minister Kanchana Wijesekara who was in Qatar with Environment Minister Nazeer Ahmed on June 30, said that SL had decided to lift the ban on Qatar Charity which had been imposed following the Easter Sunday terrorist attack that killed more than 260 men women and children. SL authorities had named Qatar Charity as a terrorist entity in 2019 and had accused the charity of funding terrorism related activities during the prominent case against lawyer Hejaaz Hizbullah. more..

Jul 5 (DM) The current state of our beloved nation could be broadly described as a story, a story that is excruciatingly painful to hear, watch and read. Whilst most stories have heroes and villains, today�s tragic drama seems to have only villains! One might say that it is absolutely futile to engage in a conversation or activity to find out who is primarily responsible for this sorry state of our melancholic story. But as the incumbent ruler of the country, you simply cannot abdicate from your fundamental function of more..

Jul 5 (CT) The US Biden Administration has demonstrated a keen interest in SL of late. With the arrival of the new US Ambassador, Julie Chung, who came during the worst financial crisis since Independence in 1948, SL is seeing the three Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) countries comprising India, US, and Japan (Australia expressed security concerns only on the illegal migration of Lankans to Australia by boat) more..

Jul 5 (CT) Closing down schools prematurely, because public transport has inadequate fuel to run regular services to take schoolchildren to and from school on time, is one of the most recent of records created by Prez Rajapaksa, caused by the shortage of US dollars in the country. Usually schools are closed prematurely during wars, insurgencies or pandemics, like the 5 April 1971 Insurgency and the Covid-19 Pandemic two years ago. But the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe Govt more..

Jul 5 (CT) Learned helplessness, first observed by Martin Seligman in 1965, when he was doing classical conditioning experiments on dogs, occurs when people or animals feel helpless to avoid negative situations. Seligman concluded that the conditioned dog had learned that trying to escape the shocks was futile, and thus would not try to escape it even in the new environment of the second experiment. He described this condition as learned helplessness. Humans too are like these more..

Jul 5 (TM) �What the term new normal meant to Sri Lankans a year ago is not what it means to them today. Despite being hopeful that the country would actually go back to the pre-Covid-19 era, now, the only new normal Sri Lankans can hope for involves wasting days in queues to get a few litres of fuel, fighting and competing with fellow citizens to get essentials, being as sparing as possible, and living with minimum needs. more..

Jul 5 (TM) In a context where most essential services are struggling to provide services while some remain on the verge of total collapse due to the economic crisis, in an Extraordinary Gazette dated 3 July, Prez Rajapaksa declared several such struggling services essential services. Among them are services connected to the supply of electricity, the supply and distribution of petroleum products and fuel, and the maintenance and provision of services at hospitals, nursing homes, more..

Jul 5 (Island) Fossil fuel is highly inflammable and has to be handled with care, as is known to everyone. Shortages thereof could also be so, in a manner of speaking, as evident from how tempers flare in fuel queues, igniting violence. There have been countless untoward incidents at filling stations, some of which even had to be closed temporarily as a result. The situation has recently taken a turn for the worse. Now, protesters are clashing with the police and security forces personnel directly. more..

Jul 5 (ST) When future historians come to write about the current period in SL, they will understand why it came to be called a country like no other. For there is no country like SL and it is doubtful there will be one like it in the next millennia. But if those torch bearers who foresaw a nation under another Parakramabahu the Great or not-so-great or a Dutugemunu reborn might be better off if their advertorials were discarded in the rubbish bins of history, their propagandist tomes were buried more..

Jul 5 (Island) Very little in SL at the moment inspires hope. We are facing an existential crisis that was inconceivable just six months ago. SL is also, ironically, just a year away from marking the 75th year of its independence. As we reflect on these 7 decades of postcolonial nation building, and as we confront a future of extreme precarity, our scorecard as a country is not a proud one. Much blood has been spilt in the name of postcolonial nation building and the ethno-nationalist conflict more..

Jul 5 (ST) The progress of 47 pending renewable energy projects that can add a vital 177MW to the national grid have been held up pending the calculation and review of a guaranteed tariff for the producers, by a committee appointed by the Power and Energy Ministry. A feed-in tariff is designed to support renewable energy development by providing guaranteed, above-market price for producers. CEB will buy electricity at these rates. more..

Jul 5 (FT) Int'l Chamber of Commerce Academy (ICC Academy) together with Int'l Chamber of Commerce SL (CCSL) has introduced training courses for facilitation of trade, specially designed for companies and individuals who are interested in pursuing a career in banking and finance, supply chain management and trading. These courses are conducted in association with the London Institute of Banking and Finance (LIBF). Registering through ICC SL enables a discount on these training. more..

Jul 5 (CI) SL left-arm spinner Praveen Jayawickrama has been ruled out of the second Test against Australia, due to start in Galle on Friday, after testing positive for Covid-19. An SLC media release stated that the 23-year-old had complained of feeling unwell, which was prompted the test. "Jayawickrama was immediately isolated from the rest of the team members and now will remain in room isolation for 5 days," added the release. Following Jayawickrama testing positive, the rest of the SL players and more..

Jul 5 (ST) The National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka (NOC) boasted that it would send a strong contingent of 164 members for the upcoming Commonwealth Games 2022, which will begin in Birmingham, England later this month. This, however, comes in contrast to the contingent Sri Lanka sent to Gold Coast of Australia in 2018, where the whole party was counted at 139, out of which 79 were athletes. more..

Jul 5 (Island) Kandy Schools Blues and Galle Schools Golds were declared as boys� joint winners and Puttalam Schools were the girls� winner at the 55th Sri Lanka Combined Schools Under 20 boys and girls Hockey Nationals held from 27th to 30th June at the Torrington Astro Turf. The boys� final, between Kandy and Galle ended in a one-all draw; both goals scored in the first half, Kushan Ratnasuriya scoring for Galle and the equalizer by Bhanuka Ranasinghe for Kandy. more..

Jul 5 (DM) SL�s unemployment rate softened in the March quarter as the economy emerged from most of virus-related restrictions only to be brutally hit by the foreign exchange crisis which brought it to a near standstill, unwinding even little improvements made in the employment matrices. SL�s official unemployment rate softened a bit to 4.3% by the end of March from 4.6% in Dec 2021. But, the great economic collapse in March has had probably forced many thousands out of their jobs more..

Jul 5 (DN) The most awaited franchise cricket tournament in SL T-20 Lanka Premier League (LPL) player draft is scheduled to be held today. A total of 353 players, consisting of 180 overseas and 173 SL players (First Class, Internationals, and Ex-Internationals) will feature in the upcoming Draft, which will be held virtually today 5 pm, with the participation of the LPL Governance Committee, and the Franchise Owners (Management & Coaches). SLC has appointed a new tournament Dir more..

Jul 5 (DN) South Asia's fastest man Yupun Abeykoon who set a new record with a time of 9.96 seconds to create history on Sunday). After his record timing in Switzerland Abeykoon said. I worked hard for years and it paid off. He further said I am the new member of Sub ten club, the first sub ten in South Asia and the owner of the 10th sub ten in the history of Asia. Abeykoon of the SL Army further said I pay tribute to the people who were with me. I honoured those who trusted me. more..

Jul 5 (FT) The Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka (SEC), said it has prepared Rules pertaining to Market Institutions, Market Intermediaries and a Code for Collective Investment Schemes following the enactment of the new Securities and Exchange Commission Act No. 19 of 2021. These Rules were made in terms of the powers vested in the Commission under Section 183 of the Act. more..

Jul 5 (ST) The final rites of senior lawyer Gomin Dayasiri were conducted last evening (2) at the Borella Cemetery in Colombo. Mr Dayasiri passed away on Friday night at the age of 76. A close legal adviser to former PM Sirimavo Bandaranaike, he appeared in many cases of national significance throughout his lengthy legal career. Notable among them was the 2006 case where he, along with the late H.L. de Silva, PC and the late S.L. Gunasekara successfully argued before the SC that more..

Jul 5 (DM) The main suspect of a rape case pending in the Rantapura High Court, had been arrested while hiding at the Galle Face protest site by the Fort Police. Police said open warrants were issued against the suspect due to the non-appearance of the case. The 25-year old suspect, a resident of Ratnapura had been arrested on information that he had been staying at the Galle Face protest site for about 2 months. The suspect was produced before the Fort Magistrate's Court and remanded. more..

Jul 5 (TM) The programme to provide a nutrition allowance worth Rs. 20,000 to pregnant women and lactating mothers has been stopped without prior notice due to a lack of funds of the Ministry of Women, Child Affairs, and Social Empowerment. �A circular has been issued to stop this programme as the Ministry of Women, Child Affairs and Social Empowerment does not have sufficient funds� Divisional Secretariats said. more..

Jul 5 (CT) Crisis hit SL�s economic reform needs to be intertwined with political reform in order to create a sustainable and prosperous economy for all Sri Lankans, US Ambassador to SL, Julie Chung, said. Addressing a 183rd AGM of Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) she said, �Every day, I see and hear examples about incredible ingenuity and inspirational efforts that are contributing to the well-being of every-day Sri Lankans. �It also requires political stability and urgent action,� she said. more..

Jul 5 (TM) Although the shortage of pharmaceutical drugs and other medical supplies in the country has now been somewhat alleviated due to the donations received from various parties, the distribution of such is not being conducted properly due to the prevailing fuel crisis, claimed the Society of Govt Pharmacists (SGP). SGP President, Ajith Thilakarathna said: �In the recent past, there were not enough stocks of drugs and medical supplies in the Medical Supplies Division (MSD) more..

Jul 5 (DN) Ministry of Transport has initiated a probe into allegations that private bus operators who obtain fuel from SLTB depots are engaged in a racket selling fuel to persons outside at higher prices instead of transporting passengers. Ministry said 105 depots owned by SLTB currently provide fuel for private buses for passenger transport. However, complaints have been received from various areas to the Minister Bandula Gunawardena that private bus operators are engaged in a fuel racket more..