Ranil still gets the cars, security and privileges of a government minister. He still gets to speak and people have to listen and print what he says. He still appears on TV and the cover pages, essentially for sitting around. Ranil even gets to travel and visiting dignitaries still talk to him like he’s an ...

by Rick Westhead Toronto Star, South Asia Bureau TRINCOMALEE, SRI LANKA—The weathered wooden bench that serves as an open-air confessional booth at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church doesn’t enjoy much down time nowadays. It’s not that more people are...

by P.Sainath The Commonwealth Games over, we can now return to those of everyday Indian life. For all the protests, though, there was nothing in the corruption that marked the Games that does not permeate every town and city, all...

by Mahinda Rajapaksa (Following is the full text of the address by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to the United Nations General Assembly at New York on September 23rd 2010) “I have great pleasure in congratulating Your Excellency Joseph Deiss,...

51 percent of Illinois residents approve of Obama's job as president, but that's down from 59 percent last yearEnthusiasm for Barack Obama's presidency in his home state has cooled as Illinois voters have grown increasingly uneasy over stewardship of the sputtering economy, a new Tribune/WGN-TV

The full transcript of the president's speech can be found at the bottom of this page.Claiming no victory, President Barack Obama formally ended the U.S. combat role in Iraq after seven long years of bloodshed, declaring firmly Tuesday night: "It's time to turn the page." Now, he said, the nation's most urgent priority is fixing its own sickly economy.From the Oval Office, where George W. Bush fir...

Bellingham will be one of many cities nationwide featured in a PBS "Now" special called "Fixing the Future." TV crews were in the city Aug. 8-11, filming at sustainable businesses for the one-hour special scheduled to air Nov. 18.

By Sumanasiri Liyanage Why do we need laws? If all of us are law-abiding citizens, laws may become redundant. Someone has remarked that laws are needed to restrict and limit the actions of the heartless people....

by Dr.Rohan Gunaratne It is my distinct privilege to deliver the 13th Deshamanya Professor Nandadasa Kodagoda Oration this evening. Professor Kodagoda was an intellectual giant of our times. Born in Ahangama in the Galle District in 1929, he was educated...

It is 27 years since Black July – and just over one year since the war ended… in a remote mangrove in the North. Gowri was 19 years old, her father was a clerical hand. It had taken Shanmugam 40 years to reach the position of Head Clerk. Shanmugam and his wife Shanthi’s only ambition ...

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 Ravi Gee I was in Srilanka a fortnight ago for the first time. I travelled to Southern towns Kandy, Bentota and Colombo by road. I would like to share my observations, a mix of positives and negatives as below....

Cast members of the television program "Army Wives" are urging South Carolina lawmakers to continue the incentives for the program.Multiple media outlets reported about a dozen cast members gathered in Charleston on Sunday to encourage people to push for the state's incentive package.Gov. Mark Sanford had vetoed the incentives offered to the program and lawmakers narrowly overrode the veto.Wendy D...

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...

The electors in Sri Lanka operate on a very simple principle – they vote for those who work for them or at least pretend to work – and many do just that. The term ‘work’ in the Sri Lankan context, especially where elections are concerned is where those that seek office are seen as having ...

By Sumanasiri Liyanage Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Russian Revolution, once said that when a specific music is played, the issue is not which key is important, but when a particular key should played. The events unfolded in the past month or so have shown that Sri Lanka has made a new turn in its foreign policy. By identifying this new turn, I do not mean a paradigm shift in Sri Lankan...

By Ranil Wickremesinghe Politics is a dynamic process, so political parties cannot afford to be stagnant. Whether we win or lose, parties need to renew themselves periodically because the needs and desires of the electorate keep changing....

With its foreboding lighting effects that appear to have been plucked straight out of Dante's dark epic Inferno-and cleverly devised one suspects to reduce its willing, and oftentimes unsuspecting, "victims" to submission-the BBC's HARDtalk program has attained a universal reputation...

The three Democrats vying to become governor of South Carolina are meeting on the state's coast to debate how best to help the state's economy.State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex and state Sens. Robert Ford and Vincent Sheheen meet Thursday evening in a debate at Coastal Carolina University in Conway.The Republican candidates were in Florence earlier this week to discuss the same issue.The d...

by Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake “Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than...

The Government is geared to accelerate the development of the economy in addition to effecting many people’s friendly changes to the Constitution. This reference has been made by Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Joining in an interview with Al Jazeera TV, the Defence Secretary