Abu Dhabi: Former England captain Geoffrey Boycott had joked in his match commentary on the third day of the Abu Dhabi Test that he would sell his three houses if his side lost the match. Little did he know that Day 4 would turn the fortunes in Pakistan’s favour. Pakistan got an unassailable 2-0 lead ...

BBC WS speak to Shehan Karunatilaka whose debut novel set in Cricket-mad Sri Lanka won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.

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(Reuters): Malaysian-owned Caterham emerged at the head of the pack on Thursday as the first of the Formula One teams to show off their new car. If the green and yellow CT01 was unlikely to win any beauty parade, with some branding the ‘platypus-nosed’ car downright ugly, technical head Mike Gascoyne was sure it would ...

(Srilankamirror) - The US will cut almost 100,000 troops, the BBC reports.

BBC: At least 31 people have been injured in clashes between guards and rioting inmates at Welikada prison yesterday. Most of the injured are prisoners who were shot by guards. Police deny claims that three inmates were killed. Several buildings were set alight in the remand wing of Colombo’

Media organisations in Sri Lanka have urged the authorities to investigate all recent attacks on media personnel and institutions. The watchdogs say they will stage a protest on 25 January in Colombo against a series of attacks against media personnel in recent years. It will especially mark “Black January” during which many prominent media personnel ...

A Palestinian doctor whose three daughters were killed in Israeli shelling three years ago has been speaking to the BBC about the charity he has created in their memory.

Sri Lanka has reportedly ordered 161 foreign Muslim preachers to leave the country for flouting visa regulations. A senior immigration official was quoted as saying that the clerics had no right to preach in mosques because they had arrived on tourist visas, BBC reports. .

It’s December 2010, and two young law students are sitting for their exam. The one is in a hall full of students, who are being monitored closely by the examiner to make sure they’re following the rules: no phones, no electronic devices, no cheating. The other, meanwhile is taken to a private air conditioned room with a computer ...

Jaffna Commander Says Abduction Claims Baseless By Easwaran Rutnam The Army yesterday slammed Sarath Fonseka after he had alleged that the military was behind a spate of abductions in the north. Jaffna Security Forces Commander Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe told The Sunday Leader that Fonseka was making baseless allegations while serving a prison sentence on ...

An Indian school teacher has got the shock of his life when he has found his bank account showing a balance of US$ 9.8 billion, when it actually should have been just US$ 200, says a media report. Parijat Saha has initially found this when he has checked his bank balance via online. Later on he has ...

The big push initiated on BBC Two's Stargazing Live series to find planets beyond our Solar System has had an immediate result, with a viewer identifying a possible candidate.

The newly elected president of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) has once again has predicted that at least five years will be needed to resolve its financial crisis. Upali Dharmadasa, who was elected uncontested on 03 January, said the SLC will get a considerable amount of income from future tours of other Test playing nations by ...

I go to the trouble of writing to the Editor of The Sunday Leader because an aspect of Tissaranee Gunasekara’s journalism I have long admired has been her concern with exactitude. I am afraid, however, that her assertion that “the GMOA with 40 other institutions connected to the medical professions wrote  to the President… requesting ...

Reuters: Manchester City suffered a third loss in four matches as Steven Gerrard earned Liverpool a 1-0 victory in the first leg of their League Cup semi-final at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday. Captain Gerrard, who has just returned from a long layoff with a groin injury, clinically converted a 13th minute penalty to put ...

A Great Barrier Reef pearlfish is filmed by the BBC living inside a sea cucumber's bottom. Where are some of the other strange places that fish live?

By Tisaranee Gunasekara “Nothing is closer to the law of the jungle than a system of distorted laws and procedures” Haaretz Editorial (2.1.2012) President Rajapaksa won the Eelam War, with the help of countless others (including the imprisoned Gen. Fonseka). In fairytales, the hero who saves a country from some deadly peril is rewarded with ...

The Range Rover Evoque, Land Rover’s sensational new SUV – a car that won 34 international awards in the three months after its first production model came off the line in September 2011 – has arrived in Sri Lanka. The smallest, lightest, most fuel-efficient Range Rover ever produced, the Evoque has been described as ‘one ...

Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna is to make an official visit to Sri Lanka on 16 January to discuss bilateral relations and security in the region. The Government web site news.lk said that in an interview given to the Indian Journal Business Standards, Krishna has said that the Indian Government has never provided overt or ...

Below is an interview with Ambassador Dayan Jayatilleke published in the French Diplomatic Review – La Lettre Diplomatique (The Diplomatic Letter) Two years after the end of a three decades conflict, the lifting of the emergency rule in late August 2011 confirmed the beginning of a new era for Sri Lanka. With the recent discovery of ...

BBC: Hoteliers in a popular tourist destination in Sri Lanka have accused a local politician of blackmailing them and demanding ransom from hotels at the peak of a tourism season. The Hikkaduwa Hoteliers Association (HHA) told BBC Sandeshaya that the town’s Mayor, Winnie Kariyawasam

Reuters: Asian factory output remained weak in December, with Chinese manufacturers narrowly avoiding contraction and South Korea’s industrial production shrinking the most in almost three years, while Europe data this week is expected to point to a recession. India, however, saw strong factory activity in December that defied recent weakness in Asia’s third-largest economy. Meanwhile,...

(Srilankamirror) - Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva has denied the Sri Lankan government was under pressure from India to devolve more powers to the provinces. "No no no no, there was no pressure. Neither India nor other country can dictate how our country is governed," he has said. Mr. de Silva, who is heading the SLFP delegation to talks with the TNA, was responding to a question...

The head of a UK charity that sent a consignment of wheelchairs to Sri Lanka has condemned the decision to impose customs duties of over $8,000 (£5,180), the BBC reported. Peter Thompson, of the Yorkshire-based PhysioNet charity, said the shipment for Tamil war victims

“…by clever and persevering use of propaganda, even heaven can be represented as  hell to the people, and conversely the most wretched life as paradise”. Hitler (Mein Kampf) By Tisaranee Gunasekara Impunity is illimitable.   If the law was allowed to take its normal course after the Kolonnawa mini-war, the Christmas Eve murder of a ...

The head of a UK charity has condemned the imposing of a customs duty of over US$ 8000  for a consignment of wheel chairs that were sent to Sri Lanka for war victims, the BBC website reported. Peter Thompson, of the Yorkshire-based PhysioNet charity, said the shipment for war victims

More than 26,000 displaced people are yet to be allowed to resettle in their ancestral lands occupied by high security zones (HSZ) in Jaffna, according to Sri Lanka's main Tamil political party, the BBC reported.   The BBC reported that the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has submitted a report

Tributes have been paid to a "committed" Red Cross worker who died after being attacked on Christmas Day while on holiday, the Press Association reported Khuram Shaikh, 32, from Manchester, a physiotherapist working for the International Red Cross in the Middle East, was killed in the tourist resort of Tangalle, about 100 miles south of the capital Colombo.   Unmarried Mr Shaikh was t...

The Tamil hit song ‘Kolaveri di’ has become a hit in India and Sri Lanka thanks to its catchy beat and words. Now a Sri Lankan born British singer Arjun Coomaraswamy has released an English remix of the track in London and it has reached almost 2 million hits on YouTube. The English version of ...