Jan 11 (AFP) The tsunami which initially sparked hopes of a renewal of the Sri Lankan peace process has caused "irreparable damage" in relations between the government and the Tamil Tigers, a rebel leader said. more..

Jan 11 (AP) Sri Lankan troops and Tamil rebels, deadly foes for two decades, worked together on tsunami relief efforts - but hopes are fading that the disaster will help heal the animosity. Since the disaster, Sinhalese and Tamils have rescued, fed and cared for each other. more..

Jan 11 (AFP) Despite their training and combat experience, the US marines working in tsunami-hit Sri Lanka admit that picking through the shattered remains of peoples' lives has been a heart-rending exercise. more..

Jan 11 (Yahoo) A Sri Lankan boy flexes his muscles while helping a U.S. Marine to clear debris at Sudarma College near Galle, southern Sri Lanka, January 11, 2005. more..

Jan 11 (PP) Ending a long and dispiriting break, uniformed schoolchildren filled the sidewalks of Sri Lanka's tropical capital Monday morning. Classes in Colombo restarted under sunny skies, but elsewhere in the island nation, the youthful energy was missing. more..

Jan 11 (AFP) Berlin is ready to promote tourism and push for debt relief and free access to European markets to help tsunami-battered Sri Lanka get back on its feet, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said. more..

Jan 11 (TOI) Seven Sri Lankan cricketers playing in tournaments organised at various levels died in tsunami disaster, the cricket board announced on Tuesday. "So far seven current cricketers playing in board-organised tournaments have been confirmed dead, while numerous have lost friends and family members," Sri Lanka Cricket(SLC) said. more..

Jan 11 (AFP) Muttiah Muralitharan has made his peace with Australian Prime Minister John Howard after the Aussie leader's 'chucker' call. Asian Cricket Council chief executive Syed Ashraful Huq said the two met in the dressing-rooms after the Asian Tsunami Relief Appeal match here on Monday which raised 14.6 million dollars (11 million US) towards helping the tsunami victims. more..

Jan 11 (AP) The head of Interpol arrived Tuesday to tour Sri Lanka's tsunami-hit southern coast and offer the government additional help in identifying victims. Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble flew by helicopter from the capital, Colombo, to the port town of Galle, where more than 4,000 bodies were recovered after the giant waves. more..

Jan 11 (Bloomberg) The U.S. will reduce the number of soldiers being sent to Sri Lanka to distribute food, medicine and other relief supplies to victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami, a U.S. military official said. "We have to minimize the footprints because we don't want this to appear to be a military operation," more..

Jan 11 (Yahoo) Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Nobel (R) chats with Sri Lankan Senior Superintendent of Galle district police, Lasantha de Silva, amid the rubbles of destroyed houses in Galle, more..

Jan 11 (Reuters) Plan Sri Lanka has moved swiftly to the rehabilitation and recovery stage, focusing especially in the areas of housing construction, livelihood, education and water and sanitation needs. Much of the work will be in the Hambantota District, where Plan has had a development programme since 1996. more..

Jan 11 (IANS) Fear and rumours are an invisible thread running through Sri Lankan society after the tsunami. Along the coast, experienced fishermen refuse to return to the ocean, frightened it will attack again, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald. more..

Jan 11 (AP) Sri Lanka's ethnic Sinhalese president plans to adopt a Tamil child orphaned by last month's tsunami, her spokesman said Tuesday _ a gesture that appeared to be aimed at helping mend a three-decade rift between the two warring communities. more..

Jan 11 (Reuters) Standing outside the gates of Karapiteya hospital near Galle, Jayanthy Jayprakash is a picture of grief. The 26-year-old journalist confronts everyone who walks in the hospital, showing them a photograph of her father, missing since the Dec. 26 tsunami. more..

Jan 11 (NP) Norway is criticised by Sri Lanka after Foreign Minister Jan Petersen failed to include Sri Lanka in his visit to the South-East Asian disaster area over the past several days. The critics point out that Norway is very important in the peace process in Sri Lanka, more..

Jan 11 (NP) Not long after losing 24 relatives, including his wife and three of his four children, Mohammad Sumanthra Jainudeen stood over the freshly made grave of his 16-year-old daughter and proclaimed that he was very happy. more..

Jan 11 (ND) It is one of the saddest ironies of the tsunami that some families are holding out hope that their children were snatched by strangers claiming them as their own, rather than lost in the sea. more..

Jan 11 (WP) Classes were supposed to start yesterday after the end-of-the-year holiday at the Namahal Vidyalayam School in what used to be a fishing village on this sliver of sand between the Indian Ocean and a saltwater lagoon. But no class bell is going to ring. more..

Jan 11 (Yahoo) Teachers at a school in the seaside village of Gintota clean up muddy water-soaked articles in the school destroyed by the massive Tsunami, southern Sri Lanka, Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2005. more..

Jan 11 (DN) President Chandrika Kumaratunga has appealed to tsunami victims against making any hasty attempt to reconstruct their damaged homes within a 200-metre limit from the sea shore adding that such attempts will be declared illegal. more..

Jan 11 (AP) Sri Lanka's tsunami death toll increased to 30,882 people Tuesday with 161 more deaths recorded in the past 24 hours, the government said. The number of missing also rose, by 185 to more than 6,000 people, the government's National Disaster Management Center said. more..

Jan 11 (PA) Tsunami-hit Sri Lankans will have an even harder task to rebuild their lives if tourism declines in their area, a UK travel chief said today. And the director of the Sri Lanka tourist board in the UK also pleaded with British tourists to go back to her badly-hit country as soon as possible. more..

Jan 11 (HT) Sri Lanka's "amazing" health infrastructure helped prevent the spread of diseases and epidemics after the tsunami attack of December 26, says Dr Kan Tun, Representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Sri Lanka. more..

Jan 11 (Reuters) Sri Lanka stocksended flat on Tuesday as retail and foreign investors took profits after recent gains by select shares on the Colombo bourse, brokers said. The key Colombo all-share index fell a provisional 0.35 percent, or 5.50 points, to 1,562.61 points. more..

Jan 11 (WF) American Fulbright scholars studying in Sri Lanka have stepped out of the classroom to join in the relief effort in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami. Using their skills to address specific relief needs, these scholars have in some cases become more than just volunteers. more..

Jan 11 (CNA) Tsunami-stricken Sri Lanka needs to build homes and look after social needs such as education and counselling as it moves into the next phase of its recovery, and Singapore can help in these areas, says Education Minister Tharman Shannumugaratnam. more..

Jan 11 (HT) The Sinhala nationalist JVP has asked the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to "help dismantle the terrorist LTTE." In a letter to Annan last Saturday, the JVP's Supremo, Somawansa Amarasinghe, said that the international community had an obligation to stand up for what it had been advocating, more..

Jan 12 (TN) Importance of urgently starting a public awareness campaign on the counseling needs for the survivors of tsunami disaster was discussed in a coordinating meeting of representatives of humanitarian organisations held Tuesday 2 pm at the North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESOHR) located at Karadipokku in Kilinochchi, more..

Jan 12 (TN) Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) has distributed several thousand rupees worth relief materials to hundreds of Tsunami Muslim victims in the district. TRO Trincomalee district team led by its Director Mr.Jeha visited Kinniya Central College and handed over several packages of relief items to the management of the Kinniya Jamiethul Ulama Council (KJUC). more..

Jan 12 (TN) Ms Nirupama Sen, Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Tuesday visited northern town of Jaffna. She arrived in Palaly by a special aircraft. Thereafter she was taken in a Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) helicopter and showed the coastal area destruction in Manatkadu and Kudathanai, sources said. more..

Jan 12 (TN) Twenty member of medical team of the Norwegian Red Cross Society Tuesday commenced its services in its temporary hospital put up in Eachchilampathu village which is in the LTTE controlled area down south of the Trincomalee district under the co-ordination of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC). more..

Jan 12 (Yahoo) A Sri Lankan boy sorts out muddy water-soaked books at a school in the seaside village of Gintota destroyed by the massive Tsunami, southern Sri Lanka, Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2005. more..

Jan 12 (Reuters) Sri Lanka needs thousands of boats to get its fishing fleet back to sea. Donations of boats, new boat yards and factories and micro-loans to help the fishing industry rebuild are crucial to restore employment and food supplies for hundreds of thousands Sri Lankans. more..

Jan 12 (AP) Spain will help Sri Lanka recover from the Asian tsunami, the Spanish foreign minister said on Tuesday, shortly after arriving in this wave-battered island nation. "We are coming here to share with our Sri Lankan friends what is urgent, what needs to be discussed in the near future more..

Jan 12 (JP) A group of Israelis from IsraAID, a coordinating body of Jewish organizations worldwide and non-governmental organizations based in Israel, arrived in Sri Lanka late Monday night to set up a relief camp, as part of the Israel Campaign For Southeast Asia Disaster. more..

Jan 12 (BBC) Regional journalists will not be able to report on corruption and other malpractises related to aid distribution as many of them were personally affected by the tsunami, a media organisation warned. more..

Jan 12 (CTV) A member of Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team says they are very much needed in Sri Lanka, rejecting reports that there is already too much help in the region. "There's quite a few people we have talked to, including local hospitals, clinics and doctors, that certainly very much need our assistance here from a medical point of view," more..

Jan 12 (Xinhua) Sri Lanka's main opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe on Tuesday called for urgent action to restore normalcy in tsunami hit areas within six months. Addressing on a television here, Wickremesinghe said "We have to make sure normalcy comes back in six months." more..

Jan 12 (AT) Leaders of the political parties in Sri Lanka, unmindful of their petty political differences have come forward to build the nation affected by the worst human catastrophe and as an experimental measure UNP’s Milinda Moragoda, Minister Mangala Samaraweera and many other leaders has come forward to work together. more..

Jan 12 (Yahoo) A Sri Lankan fisherman climbs on the mast of his nearly repaired catamaran boat in Hikkaduwa, southern Sri Lanka on Tuesday, January 11, 2005. more..

Jan 12 (PTI) People affected by the tsunami in Sri Lanka needed urgent counselling, relief and rehabilitation, a team of local doctors, who treated the victims in the island nation recently, said here today. "They are in psychological fear....What they require now is relief and rehabilitation so that they can begin their normal life," more..

Jan 12 (NZH) They are making their way back to school this week. From around Matara, the pupils of Sujatha Vidiyala school trickled into the classrooms. But lessons had changed forever. In one room, where an English lesson should have been read to 40 people, there were just nine. more..

Jan 12 (AFP) The next two weeks will be crucial for thousands of tsunami survivors across Asia, the World Health Organisation warned as Sri Lanka said relief was getting through while more offers of aid poured in. more..

Jan 12 (IL) The relief aid disbursed by the Government and the foreign relief teams deployed in the devastated areas, in the aftermath of the tsunami tragedy, includes the North East as well, states the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC), in a press release by the Government Information Department. more..

Jan 12 (AFP) Sri Lankan wicketkeeper Kumar Sangakkara believes the entire Asian region will benefit from the unifying influence of the international cricket games raising funds for the Tsunami Relief Appeal. more..

Jan 12 (AT) The Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin’s scheduled visit has put the Foreign Ministry into a whirl of indecision, for the simple reason that Martin wants to visit the LTTE areas. more..

Jan 12 (AT) There is increasing disenchantment about the government’s centralization of the Tsunami relief effort. This on two fronts: One is the state’s new regulation that all goods that are sent to volunteer organizations be distributed by the Social Services and Heath Ministries after inspection by the customs. more..

Jan 12 (AT) The influx of foreign currency due to Tsunami aid is now assuming problem proportions for the Sri Lanka. The dollar has been previously (at the end of last year for instance) sliding against all Asian currencies on speculation that US President George W. Bush wants a weak currency in order to reduce the country’s record trade and budget deficit. more..

Jan 12 (AT) The government is planning to move the Southern Galle Hambanthota and Hikkaduwa towns to the interior, as part of the post tsunami nation re-building effort. The plan is to take the towns to the interior from the coast, while joining the towns via the new highway that will link the South to Colombo. more..