With Sri Lanka’s 2024 budget being approved by Parliament yesterday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is likely to give approval to its second tranche of a USD 3 billion bailout package, after which the country’s economy is likely to stabili

The world is celebrating 75 years of human rights at this point of time, and its timely to look back and reflect on how Sri Lanka has fared in a subject which promises a better and righteous society. From the time Sri Lanka received independence fro

QWhat is your party’s stand on the current debt crisis and the Extended Fund facility with the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? As everyone else does, we also see this as a rigorous economic crisis. The real crisis is more serious than the one b

On Sunday, Parliament approved the Value Added Tax (VAT) Amendment Bill at a time most of our citizens are struggling to provide their families with three square meals a day. We also know the bill....

Last week, three ex-Sri Lankan military personnel were killed in a Russian attack while serving with the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. The trio were undertaking a rescue operation ahead of the forward....

Parliament sessions on Sunday had to be adjourned for Monday for want of quorum, while the Value Added Tax (VAT) Amendment Bill was being debated. Interestingly, only 18 out of 225 members elected by the people to represent them were present at the t

In these days of economic downturns and rising unemployment, it is not surprising that Sri Lankans and Nepalese with a military background are finding jobs in their line of expertise in the Russo-Ukrainian war theatre. While retired Sri Lankan milit

Shortly after 17:00hrs on Saturday, the lights went out in Lanka. At first most people felt it was a localised power failure. Shortly...

The stakeholders and the media have reacted strongly to some uncertain or ambiguous poll data. In matters as critical as gauging...

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been taking every possible effort to minimize the effects of the Supreme Court ruling on November 14 against him, two of his brothers and officials loyal to them, pronouncing that they were responsible for the e

The next year for us Lankan’s is an election year. Whom are we going to elect as President? Our country is going through one of the most traumatic periods in its history. Irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, large sections of the public hav

Sri Lanka’s 2024 budget, touted as “revolutionary,” punishes the poor with sky-rocketing indirect taxes to reward owners of government debt, by allocating the largest share of expenditure on domestic interest payments and servicing Internationa

Two English speaking youth (in their early twenties) made a journey to Malabe in the same Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) maintained bus that this writer was travelling in the other day. Their pronunciation....

With Israel continuing its genocidal war and the Arab and Islamic countries rueing their handicap to militarily challenge Israel, Gaza appears as ground zero of the apocalypse. In this genocide....

In commercial terms, the Christmas season is on going with bargain sales and shopping sprees mainly by Christians who stand indicted of commercialising Christmas. To encourage Christians to mark Christmas in an austere manner and in the spirit of the

With the committee stage debates on Budget 2024 still ongoing, our interest has been piqued by a term that has gained relatively little attention since it was mentioned in the Budget Speech presented on 13 November 2023: “Gender-Based Budgeting”.

This article is based on an address delivered by Rajeev Amarasuriya in the Session on Disability Rights at the 36th LAWASIA Conference held in Bengaluru, India recently. The world as we know it has been on a pathway towards development, to make the

Born on September 17, 1947 at Mataramba, a lush village in the District of Galle as the fifth sibling in a family of six children and having received his primary education at Malcom Vidyalaya Yatagala, the Ven. Hemarathana entered the Buddha Sasana o

Two weeks back, crisis-hit Argentina elected a far-right outsider as the President, ending nearly eight decades of dominance of the mainstream right and left in the politics of South America’s...

The New York Times is one of the USA’s most popular news sites. The newspaper’s print version remains the largest local metropolitan newspaper in the United States, and is known for its hard-hitting....

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose mascot is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has swept three of the five States which went to the polls recently. The results of the elections, except....

In Sri Lanka, the Carbon Crediting Scheme (SLCCS) is a national offset scheme established to support local clean projects to benefit from climate finance for Greenhouse Gas emission (GHG) reduction. This scheme is developed with well-defined provisi

As alerted by some foreign intelligence agencies a few days ago, a person identified as Dwaraka, the daughter of the slain leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Velupillai Prabhakaran appeared on a Europe-based website last Monday (No

What becomes of a people who are not just abandoned but willfully dispossessed by the state using the crisis as an opportunity? How do the people respond when political parties hardly see their suffering, and their trade unions are for the most part

In April 2022, our country declared it would be defaulting on its external debt of $51 billion. A result of domestic economic mismanagement and a drop in foreign currency reserves. In turn this led to shortages....

Cricket still takes up valuable Parliamentary time. Before we delve into today’s main topic, let’s spare a few lines for the ‘Game.’The legendary Dr. W.G. Grace was known for his remarkable....

Gentle, undisturbed birth. Delayed cord clamping. Respecting mothers’ choices. Vaginal Births After C-Sections (VBACs.) Water births. Physiological breech births. Reducing episiotomies and unnecessary interventions. Bodily autonomy and informed con

A Fundamental Rights Petition has been filed on Tuesday before the Supreme Court seeking an order suspending the implementation of a decision taken by the Constitutional Council (CC) calling for a report from the Chief Justice regarding certain Judge

The month of Christmas is already upon us. In another 21 days we - the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the war-affected and those who inflict war on helpless people - will all in our own way be ‘celebrating’ the festival of Christmas.

A long wait by the people to know who would be their next Inspector General of Police (IGP) came to an end when the Executive appointed Deshabandu Tennakoon as the Acting IGP on November....