By Faraz Shauketaly The National New Year celebrations – Sinhalese and Tamil New Year – provides an unparalleled opportunity each year to visit friends, relax and simply do nothing. It is also an opportunity to make all the politically correct sound bites and assure anyone and everyone including pedantic outlaws (read in-laws) how very much ...

With ending of the Maha season paddy harvesting, newspapers and TV have been highlighting problems encountered by farmers in disposing of their harvest. Due excellent weather, free from drought, flood and disease, farmers have received a bumper crop but the problem is to convert the harvest into cash, in order to settle debts incurred in ...

In the time tested form of the parliamentary system of governance there is the concept of  Cabinet Responsibility (Ministerial Responsibility) where ministers are said to be ‘collectively responsible’ for government policy. In Sri Lanka’s fast evolving constitutional form of government – particularly under President Mahinda Rajapaksa – the cabinet itself has become a tremendous joke .....

With the recent relaxing of the rupee exchange rate and subsequent increase in fuel prices, trade unions and the opposition parties are conducting protest campaigns against the Government, demanding a reduction in oil prices and the cost of living. This article investigates the living conditions

Titan Fleet Management, France a specialist yacht management company places confidence in Colombo for their repair requirements on super luxury yacht Lauren L. This seven star category 90 meter long yacht called in for repairs on 1 February. The luxury yacht called in for her 10 year class survey repairs coupled with hull surface preparation ...

The  people for the past three decades have suffered the steady rise in the cost of living with great forbearance. We have no ready index to point to for this Himalayan climb other than the price of bread which Chandrika Kumaratunga in her presidential bid vowed to reduce to Rs 3 per loaf. Now the ...

Subsidies? Well yes, but make them smart subsidiesNigeria: Subsidising the neighbours Nigeria’s Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamidi Sanusi, had a problem. In a recent live interview with the Aljazeera TV, he said that his country had to raise the retail prices of all petroleum products to match the rising international prices, despite the violent and ...

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s speech to the nation on Independence Day provided an indication of his two major concerns for the future. One concern was the persistent international pressure on his government on human rights issues during and after the end of the war. The other concern was the efforts to destabilize the government through mass agitation ...

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 ...

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 ...

Amid religious blessings, President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday ceremonially declared open the country’s first expressway, the E-01 Southern Expressway, from Colombo to Galle. Unveiling a commemorative plaque at the southernmost access road to the expressway from the Pinnaduwa interchange in southern city of Galle, the President in his capacity as the Minister of Highways opened the ...

Arrenga Capital Research takes a deeper look at Budget 2012 and impact on select listed companies 1. A challenging deficit target – 6.2% of GDP in 2012 I. Government revenue targeted to grow by 20.2% YoY to Rs. 1,126.1 b (14.7% of GDP) II. Total Government expenditure to rise 14.1% YoY to Rs. 1,594.9 b ...

I like to be an optimist. No matter what may happen around us, I would like to retain feelings of hope I have for all human-kind and on a more intimate level for you, for me, the newborn and the to-be-born. Yet, what has already happened around me, happening now and may happen in the ...

Nearly two decades ago, Jeep invented the premium sport-utility vehicle (SUV) segment with the introduction of the Jeep Grand Cherokee. More than four million sales later, Jeep improves the formula and delivers the ultimate combination of Jeep 4×4 capability and on-road refinement with the all-new 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee.  Jeep Grand Cherokee delivers premium on-road ...

According to latest report of Global Peace Index (GPI), Sri Lanka ranked 126 while Norway ranked in ninth place. Here we are talking about the riots that took place in UK recently and the same GPI ranked the UK in 26th place (100 places ahead of Sri Lanka). A series of incidents erupted in England ...

COLOMBO: A TV documentary with gruesome footage that appears to back up war crimes charges against Sri Lankan troops has aggravated ethnic wounds two years after the end of the island’s civil war.

COLOMBO: A TV documentary with gruesome footage that appears to back up war crimes charges against Sri Lankan troops has aggravated ethnic wounds two years after the end of the island's civil war.

Fridges Consume 51% Electricity Air conditioning takes 78% of the electricity bill followed by lighting (16%), but in an un air conditioned house, the fridge with 51% of electricity intake is the paramount consumer, followed by the television (13%), rice cooker (12%) and lighting (8%). Intake of electricity in fridges increases in the opening and ...

By Lewie Diasz* Marketing’s forefathers Theodore Levitt and Phillip Kotler defined marketing in an era where baby boomers and generation X prevailed and marketing has evolved ever since and the evolution can be classified into different eras. The evolution begins from a hunter-gatherer orientation to agriculture orientation and then the early 1900s where demand exceeded ...

By Malathi De Alwis On 18 May 2009, Sri Lanka officially declared the end of a 30-year civil war fought between. Sri Lankan government forces (GoSL) and Tamil militants, namely the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). Such a sea...

by Ranil Wickremesinghe By the 4th century BC, Asia had begun its first cycle of economic growth and power. This was the reason why Alexander the Great decided to travel eastward to establish an empire. At that time there was...

by Dr.Kavan Ratnatunga Anula Meier Radalage has the distinction of having been the last Sinhalese to run a business in Jaffna before the conflict with the LTTE ended in May 2009. Her guest book lists special envoys Erik Solheim and...

Bedevil: In the same boat by Channa Wickramasekera Colombo: Bay Owl Press, 2010 Reviewed by Sivamohan Sumathy ‘We may have all come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now’. - Martin Luther King, Jr. Why has...

By D.B.S.Jeyaraj The  tragic history of post-independence records that the Tamils of Sri Lanka have been subjected to mass-scale mob violence in the years 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983. The anti-Tamil violence of July 1983 was the most terrible and horrible of them all. It remains etched in memory even after 27 years. Twenty ...

by Pearl Thevanayagam The recently concluded war with all its human miseries such as loss of lives, widowhood, displaced and maimed civilians, orphans, destruction of properties and denigration of agricultural lands and the disruption to normal life throughout the island...