The Galle Music Festival 2012 being held over the weekend of 3 to 4 March offers a unique opportunity to see local and international folk and contemporary music groups. The Samanala Grounds in Galle will be transformed into a traditional village setting where the folk music groups will share, exchange, and interact with other performers ...

Sri Lanka’s leading communications company Triad, with its indigenous roots and established credo ‘Sri Lanka Can,’ has taken another significant step in its corporate journey. Triad’s move to spacious premises at the heart of Colombo’s business district marks the company’s ambitious growth plan for 2012 and beyond. The sprawling 10,000 square foot premises on th...

Reuters: Hollywood showed some love for its history at the Oscars on Sunday, giving its best film award and four others to silent movie “The Artist” in a ceremony that recalled why cinema is special to so many people. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences also gave Oscars to Meryl Streep playing former ...

The Asia Capital Group today announced that construction of a 30 room hotel property, Taprobana, has begun in Balapitiya and is expected to be completed in time for summer 2013. Work has also begun on another 30 room property in Wadduwa, situated in a prime beachfront location which will be opened simultaneously. Asia Leisure owns ...

Benito Mussolini, the fascist ruler of Italy, during World War II, said that his brand of fascism ‘should be more appropriately called Corporatism, because it is a merger of state and corporate power’. Compare this with the dictionary definition of capitalism: ‘A system in which a country’s business and industry are controlled and run for ...

Dialog Axiata Plc has ended the 2011 financial year ringing a Rs. 5.4 billion profit, up by 6% over the previous year. The full year results were supported by a Group net profit of Rs. 1.4 billion in the fourth quarter, up by 2% from a year earlier. The Group recorded strong revenue growth across ...

Reuters: Iran ordered a halt to its oil sales to Britain and France on Sunday in a move seen as retaliation against tightening EU sanctions, as a team of U.N. inspectors flew to Tehran to press the Islamic Republic over its disputed nuclear programme. The European Union enraged Tehran last month when it decided to ...

Reuters: South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, the world’s biggest maker of televisions, is shifting its focus towards new generation OLED display technology, and said it will spin off its loss-making LCD flat-screen business into an affiliate. The outlook for liquid crystal display TVs has dimmed as shoppers in developed markets have traded in their bulky ...

Reuters: Iran, facing sanctions that could cripple its oil exports, has told world powers it wants to resume long-stalled talks with “new initiatives”, and France said it might be open to addressing suspicions about its nuclear programme. Tehran made the offer in a letter to the EU’s foreign policy chief obtained by Reuters on Thursday, ...

Q: 13 Plus has become the most discussed topic in the political scene. What do you think about 13 Plus? A: Before looking at the 13th Amendment or the 13 Plus, first let us give a chance to the present mechanism. I strongly believe the present mechanism can address the majority of our issues. The ...

Sri Lanka’s benchmark stock index, the world’s worst performer this year, may extend its slump as the central bank raises interest rates to curb inflation, according to HSBC Holdings Plc’s private banking unit. HSBC Private Bank, which oversees about $499 billion, will wait for stock valuations to fall to “single digit” multiples before it considers ...

Reuters: Rafa Nadal has hit out at what he called a “general campaign” in France to discredit Spanish athletes by implying their success is due to the use of illegal drugs. Speaking to reporters a day after the Spanish tennis federation (RFET) said it would sue French TV broadcaster Canal+ for “unacceptable and damaging insinuations” ...

MALE (Reuters: President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, widely credited with bringing democracy to the hideaway resort islands, resigned on Tuesday after weeks of opposition protests erupted into a police mutiny and what an aide said amounted to a coup. Nasheed, the Maldives’ first democratically elected president , handed power over the Indian Ocean archipelago ...

The Visible Hand of the government ‘The Visible Hand’ was the title which the famed London-based economics weekly, The Economist, used when it published a special report in its issue on 21 January 2012 on the rise of state capitalism in the modern era. The title has a pun: The governments do not care to ...

Ambassador updates foreign reporters on post-conflict development and reconciliation in Sri Lanka “Sri Lankans support a home grown solution for reconciliation” Ambassador invites international correspondents to visit Sri Lanka WASHINGTON: Ambassador Jaliya Wickramasuriya hosted a group of foreign correspondents here in a January 25 reception held at his residence, prompting a discussi...

Reuters: Japan’s ailing electronics giant, Sony Corp (6758.T), warned investors on Thursday it was heading for a worse-than-expected $2.9 billion annual loss, revealing the daunting task ahead for its incoming chief executive, Kazuo Hirai. The company, overtaken by more innovative rivals such as Apple and Samsung over the past decade, gave the forecast in its ...

Reuters: President Nicolas Sarkozy used a primetime television interview on Sunday to flesh out a flurry of measures to boost employment and competitiveness which he hopes to rush through France’s parliament before a presidential election in April. Sarkozy, who is running far behind Socialist challenger Francois Hollande in opinion polls for the election, said he ...

Text and pic by Harsha Udayakantha Peiris Malaka Dewapriya a young cinematographer with a determined  mission  towards a cinema with  a richer conception  to uplift the social bases of the communities has launched fieldwork for his first  feature on  silver screen for the local and international audience, namely, ‘Bahuchithavadiya’  which narrate...

Reuters: India cut cash reserve requirements for banks by 50 basis points on Tuesday to ease tight liquidity conditions, signalling a shift in policy towards reviving growth after two years of fighting inflation. With core inflation still stubbornly high, the Reserve Bank of India as expected left its policy repo rate unchanged at 8.50 percent ...

TOKYO: Japanese high-tech giant Hitachi said on Monday that it will stop making televisions by the end of September as intense price competition hurts TV earnings at many electronics manufacturers worldwide.   Hitachi will “terminate television production by the end of September” in Japan, said Sayori Nishino, a company spokeswoman, having already outsourced overseas TV ...

Reuters: Wikipedia, the popular community-edited online encyclopedia, will black out its English-language site for 24 hours to seek support against proposed U.S. anti-piracy legislation that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said threatens the future of the Internet. The U.S. service will be the highest profile name to join a growing campaign starting at midnight Eastern Time ...

LONDON (Reuters) : FIFA’s former director of international relations Jerome Champagne has suggested changes in the world governing body to help end a perception it is run by self-interested men who do not care enough about the game. The erudite 53-year-old Frenchman, who left FIFA suddenly two years ago, has now broken his silence since ...

Lack of participation in decision makingTop-down decision-making, centralisation of power and authority, lack of consultation with stakeholders, lack of accountability and the arrogance of political power are all factors which featured heavily in the socioeconomic environment of 2011 in Sri Lanka, mainly due to the lack of public consultation in the decision-making process. As Nobel ...

Looking back at 2011, DFCC Vardhana Bank (DVB), the everyday banking unit of DFCC Bank had a productive year in terms of profitability, asset growth, with a number of milestones being achieved, awards won and expansion in the bank’s products and services. The entirety of the bank’s activities focused on one goal: financial inclusion, which ...

By Dinali Goonewardene Prathilaba was telecast on Rupavahini on Sundays at 10 a.m. The TV documentary, a studio discussion on investing in the stock market was commissioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission and panellists from the stock market industry participated. These included stock brokers, research analysts, fund managers and officials from the Colombo Stock ...

In 2011, leading Sri Lankan conglomerate CIC Holdings found itself at a crossroads: although the company had become synonymous with chemicals and paints, its dynamic growth was increasingly driven by its agricultural businesses, creating a disconnect in the minds of consumers. The brand was in urgent need of more than just a fresh coat of ...

ABC Radio Networks collected five awards at the e-Swabhimani Awards Gala 2011, becoming the first radio station to ever win an award in the history of the ceremony. The e-Swabhimani Awards Gala hosted by the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) recognises the creativity and innovation in digital content and applications by ...

By Ian The President in his speech at the opening of the Southern Expressway said that this could be the beginning of building a modern society. He also mentioned that had there been such an expressway linking the north with the south the extremists would not have succeeded in capitalising on the mistrust among communities. ...

Having launched Sri Lanka’s first-ever equity investments and financial information portal, Sri Lanka Equity Analytics (www.srilankaequity.com) recently celebrated its successive second year of operations by reaching the milestone of 5,000 registered online memberships and over five million hits. Sri Lanka Equity Analytics is a financial portal designed to address varying needs of the invest...

After the recent Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, India, critics found three new words for the acronym ‘CWG’ – Corruption, Waste and lack of Governance. The Chairman of the Indian National Olympic Committee, who was Chairman of the Organising Committee, is presently in Tihar Jail, in Delhi with many of his acolytes, on charges regarding ...