President Mahinda Rajapaksa is to direct a movie with Ministers Wimal Weerawansa and Champika Ranawaka playing the lead roles, says JVP Politburo Member K. D. Lalkantha. “It will be the next attraction to be featured in film halls soon,” he said.

Speaking at the annual convention of the JVP-affiliated union of the Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB), Lalkantha observed that Weerawansa and Ranawaka would be made to act out the film script prepared by the President, which would be against [...]

India’s External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna on today unveiled the first phase of a railway project in southern Sri Lanka being built with financial aid from the Indian government.

Krishna, on a four-day visit to Sri Lanka since Monday, launched the 50 km rail track from Galle to Induruwa at a function at the Galle railway station.

The project, being executed by the state-run Indian Railways Construction International Ltd (Ircon), involves reconstruction of rail lines, training of personnel from Sri Lankan Railways [...]

A British man has been killed in an attack at a Sri Lankan resort, local police say.

They named him as Kuram Shaikah Zaman. The Foreign Office confirmed a man had died but did not release any other details. Next of kin have been told.

Police said the incident happened early on 25 December at a resort in Tangalle, about 100 miles south of Colombo.

Mr Zaman and a Russian woman were attacked after reportedly arguing with a man. Four men have [...]

Gold Coast, located in the eastern shores of Southern Queensland, Australia, a popular tourist destination, leveraging its experience in hosting large-scale sporting events and the well-developed infrastructure facilities, beat Sri Lanka to host the 2018 Commonwealth games Friday. Colombo furiously pursuing its goal of erasing memory of the massacre of 40,000 Tamil civilians in 2009, went after the bid to transform Sri Lankan President’s home electorate, Hambantota, as a "sports city," but was voted down 27 to 43 by the [...]

An Indian army team has undertaken a visit to Tamil dominated Wanni region in northern Sri Lanka, which was once a battlefront between the government forces and the rebel LTTE during the three decades ethnic conflict, the military said yesterday.

The representative delegation of the Indian Army Higher Command Course-2011 is currently touring Sri Lanka, country’s army said. The 16-member delegation is led by Air Commodore P R Navalkar of Indian Air Force.

The delegation during their six-day [...]

A South African intelligence expert made payments of as much as £60,000 through his security company for an unregistered charity linked to Dr Liam Fox.

Andre Pienaar, a multi-millionaire who keeps out of the public limelight, runs G3 Good Governance Group, a corporate security and intelligence company whose clients include the defence contractor BAE Systems.

In a lucrative industry reliant on insider information and expertise, Mr Pienaar has made it his business to be well-connected. A number of Establishment figures [...]

A Dutch court has convicted five Dutch ethnic Tamil men for raising funds for the banned Tamil Tiger rebels.

The men got sentences of up to six years for their activities on behalf of rebels who fought for an independent homeland for Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Prosecutors said the men extorted millions of euros from the Tamil diaspora through blackmail and threats.

But the defence counsel for the five men argued that they were freedom fighters.

In a complex ruling, the judge [...]

Five members of Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers were on Friday jailed for between two and six years for having sent millions of euros gathered illegally in the Netherlands to the rebel group.

The men, all of them Dutch nationals, were convicted of having raised money mainly through illegal lotteries but also through threats to members of the Sri Lankan community.

The separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have since 2006 been on a European Union list of terrorist organisations.

But the court [...]

A leading human rights group on Wednesday urged the United Nations to launch an independent investigation of alleged atrocities committed in the final stages of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, saying the country’s own probe into the matter was flawed.

Suspicions of war crimes by government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels have risen since the conflict ended in May 2009.

In a 69-page report, Amnesty International concludes that Sri Lanka’s government-appointed Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission wasn’t likely to deliver justice for [...]

Sri Lanka plans to bring new anti-terrorism rules into force effective on Wednesday, local media reported, replacing tough wartime emergency powers lifted this month under heavy international pressure.

A nearly three-decade separatist conflict ended in 2009 with the defeat of Tamil separatists. But Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa only moved last week to end wartime emergency powers in force since the August 2005 assassination of foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar by the rebels.

However on Wednesday, Sri Lanka Attorney General Mohan [...]

Foreign passport holders will now be allowed to freely visit northern Sri Lanka, officials say, much of which was severely affected by the civil war.

Until now journalists and foreign nationals needed permission from the defence ministry, even though the conflict ended two years ago.

But permission is still needed for NGOs that want to work there.

In 2009 the army defeated Tamil Tiger rebels who had fought for 26 years for a separate homeland in the north.

The director general of the [...]

A Norwegian based LTTE leader Perinpanayagam Sivaparan known by his nom de guerre Nediyawan is a prominent figure and New Leader to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had to explain himself behind closed doors to Dutch authorities in a judicial interrogation at Oslo District Court on Wednesday and Thuesday. A Dutch judge and five Dutch Defence Attorneys are in Norway to interrogate the LTTE Leader Nediyavan, who is a resident of Norway. The LTTE Leader is to be interrogated [...]

The Sri Lankan government has rejected a report commissioned by the UN on alleged human rights violations at the end of the country’s war two years ago.

The report, by a panel of rights experts, has just been submitted to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and to the government in Colombo.

Human rights groups are demanding that the report be made public.

The government has been fundamentally opposed to the panel of experts since its appointment by Mr Ban last year.

It declined [...]

Sri Lanka could be hauled before a war crimes tribunal over the killing of "many thousands of civilians" in the final months of its separatist war with Tamil rebels, a top US official said.

In the toughest warning since the end of fighting in May 2009, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert Blake, said Sri Lanka risked a forced international investigation.

His remarks came as the UN Human Rights Council was meeting in Geneva, where Sri [...]

Three Tamil plaintiffs whose relatives were killed in three different incidents, all considered to be war-crimes, filed a civil case in the District Court of District of Columbia against Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa Friday at around 4:00 p.m, the attorney for the plaintiffs and former Assistant Deputy Attorney General of the US, Mr Bruce Fein, said in a release sent to the media in the U.S. The legal action was sponsored by Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist [...]