Jan 14 (Yahoo) Sri Lanka Tamils pray at a Hindu Temple to celebrate Pongal, a four-day harvest festival, in Colombo, Jan. 14. Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority, still mourning those killed in last month's tsunami, more..

Jan 14 (LAT) Bouncing along in the front passenger seat of a donated van, Bay Area doctor Neil Jayasekera peered out the window at this tsunami-battered fishing village with an odd mixture of wonder and dread. more..

Jan 14 (PTI) Indian remote sensing satellites have captured images of Tsunami-hit regions in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, besides the coastal areas including the Andaman and Nicobar islands, a top space agency official said today. more..

Jan 14 (AFP) Pakistan's naval medical emergency teams who have set up a bustling field hospital in this tsunami-battered Sri Lankan town are to relocate to Indonesia where the need is greater, an officer said. more..

Jan 14 (HT) Major MS Niranjan from Mysore, and Surgeon Lt Rajesh Malhotra from far away Rohtak, sit in the verandah of Closenberg Hotel, perched on a hillock overlooking the devastated harbour in Galle, at the southern tip of Sri Lanka. more..

Jan 14 (AFP) Dudely Perera's dream of seeing sea turtles struck off the list of endangered species was all but obliterated by the same tsunami that wrecked his beachside turtle haven in this southwestern Sri Lankan town. more..

Jan 14 (AFP) Sri Lanka's multi-billion-dollar aid plan will include a range of cash and tax benefits for tsunami victims, officials said as the first sign of peace between sparring government forces and rebel affiliates emerged. more..

Jan 14 (Bernama) A Red Cross official said Sri Lanka has been hit by the tsunami twice -- the first slammed the island nation on Dec 26 and the second, a few days later when non-governmental organisations (NGOs) flooded in without coordination. more..

Jan 14 (AFP) Palestinian children drew pictures of Israeli gunships spitting gunfire when the intifada began; under the Taliban Afghan children drew pictures of Islamic militants gunning down civilians. more..

Jan 14 (Reuters) The joke in Sri Lanka is that when the president's office was informed that a tsunami was on the way from Indonesia, a senior aide promptly dispatched a car to the airport to pick up the unexpected visitor. more..

Jan 14 (AP) Sri Lanka is confident that cooperation with Tamil Tigers in tsunami relief efforts will strengthen attempts to end the country’s two-decade civil war, officials said on Friday. But European peace monitors reported continued tension between the parties. more..

Jan 14 (Yahoo) A Sri Lankan man carries salvaged wood from the debris of tsunami-ravaged houses in the town of Kalmunai on Sri Lanka's east coast January 14, 2005. more..

Jan 14 (Age) US helicopters have flown into eastern Sri Lanka, ferrying some 30 tonnes of relief materials, including fresh fruits and vegetables, that will be delivered to more remote regions cut off by the tsunami along the eastern coast. more..

Jan 14 (wsws) In an extraordinary move on January 3, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga placed all relief efforts on the island under the control of the armed forces. The following day, in a decision that received no publicity, she imposed a state of emergency in the affected areas, providing the military with extensive powers. more..

Jan 14 (G&M) Sri Lankan rebels recruited three young survivors of the Asian tsunamis from relief camps into Tamil Tiger guerrilla ranks, Unicef officials said yesterday, a day before Prime Minister Paul Martin leaves for an Asian trip that includes Sri Lanka. more..

Jan 14 (BBC) Both the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tiger rebels have over the years used landmines, and the civilian death toll as a result has been high. But now the dangers they pose have been made more acute because the tsunami has picked up the mines and deposited them across whole villages, making many more areas unsafe for locals. more..

Jan 14 (SL) They see the pictures, and they see themselves. For the children of Sri Lankan, Indian or Indonesian descent, the devastation of the Dec. 26 tsunami has hit close to home, even though it's a half a world away. more..

Jan 14 (TIL) Foreign aid in parts of Sri Lanka is being hijacked by an avowedly Marxist political party which has been accused of refusing to distribute relief to non-members. In Weligama, on the stricken south coast, the Evening Standard saw how flood victims were being manipulated. more..

Jan 14 (AFP) The tsunamis that ravaged Sri Lanka's coastline may has wiped out more than 80% of the island nation's fishing fleet which may take years to recover, the United Nations said. "Preliminary figures show that so far close to 18,500 fishing vessels have been reported lost or damaged," more..

Jan 14 (PTI) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved the extension of repayment expectations by Sri Lanka arising in the remainder of 2005, in respect of the enormous damage caused to the island nation during the December 26 tsunamis. more..

Jan 14 (PIS) President Chandrika Kumaratunga and UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe at a meeting on Wednesday agreed to work together for the relief and rehabilitation of tsunami victims and rebuilding of the country, a spokesman said. more..

Jan 14 (Xinhua) Five people were killed in separate incidents in Sri Lanka Friday, marring a national holidayThai Pongal significant to the minority Tamil community. Three members belonging to a suspected underworld gang were killed when they exchanged gunfire with the police in the north Colombo area of Mattakkuliya, the police said. more..

Jan 14 (Yahoo) A young Sri Lankan tsunami survivor examines a broken cassette player he pulled out from the debris of tsunami-ravaged houses in the town of Kalmunai on Sri Lanka's east coast January 14, more..

Jan 14 (DN) The Japanese Government will send a 16 member mission to Sri Lanka through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in response to a request from the Sri Lanka Government to assess the rehabilitation needs in the areas devastated by the recent tsunami disaster more..

Jan 14 (AP) Tamil Tiger rebels have forcibly enlisted more than 1,000 child soldiers since agreeing to release and rehabilitate child fighters already among the ranks, a U.S.-based human rights group said Friday. more..

Jan 14 (Reuters) The United Nations Children's Fund has received reports Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers are recruiting children displaced by last month's devastating tsunami as soldiers, and has warned the rebels to stop preying at shelters. more..

Jan 14 (CWS) A team from Church World Service Pakistan/Afghanistan provided supplies and assessed continuing needs in Betticaloa last week, meeting with tsunami survivors in the camps, camp managers, and church leaders. more..

Jan 14 (BBC) Some of the most striking video of the tsunami was taken not by professionals, but by amateurs. They used relatively-cheap, relatively-simple digital video cameras to shoot the footage. They then put their video images up on the internet. It is called video-weblogging, or vlogging. more..

Jan 14 (IPS) Political cleavage around the question of aid is threatening to erode the peace dividend that emerged between the rebel Tamil Tigers and the government of Prime Minister Chandrika Kumaratunga in the immediate wake of the tsunami tragedy. more..

Jan 14 (LAT) It's an unlikely tourist attraction. Thousands of people a day are making the pilgrimage from all over Sri Lanka to stare at eight passenger cars and a locomotive that have captured the imagination of people here and around the world. more..

Jan 14 (SCN) After seeing disasters in dozens of countries over the years I should have some professional or technical way of describing Southeast Asia's plight, but I do not. The mass destruction in Sri Lanka goes on for mile upon mile. But even more, the annihilation reaches deeply into the soul of every single person. more..

Jan 14 (Nature) In the aftermath of one of the deadliest natural disasters in decades, Quirin Schiermeier travels to Sri Lanka with a team of scientists to see how the area was affected. He reports back with details of their investigations, and impressions of life today in one of the countries hit hardest by the wave. more..

Jan 14 (PBP) On the beach on Jan. 12, men work to dig out a fisherman's boat that was buried in the sand during the tsunami. Fishing communities around the Indian Ocean were hit hardest by the Dec. 26 tsunami. more..

Jan 14 (AP) Nine different women are claiming an infant boy called "Baby 81" who was brought to a hospital in eastern Sri Lanka on the day of the tsunami last month, officials said Friday. The boy, whose real name was not known, was taken to Kalmunai Base Hospital on Dec. 26 covered with bruises and mud, more..

Jan 14 (DP) After water immersed miles of pristine beach in Wadduwa, Sri Lanka, panicked hotel guests ran up the stairs as the ocean plunged into the first-floor rooms. Ed Rogers '87 found himself surrounded by pandemonium and devastation from the powerful tsunami that has by now claimed nearly 150,000 lives. more..

Jan 14 (Reuters) The United Nations food agency, worried about a drop in fish consumption in poor Asian countries, said on Friday fish from the Indian Ocean were safe and had not been made poisonous by the effects of the tsunami. more..

Jan 14 (PR) Sheltered by 50 years of Soviet occupation, volunteerism and the work of NGO's (non governmental organizations) is new to most Latvian's. In addition, Latvia has been fortunate up this past weekend not to have experienced many natural disasters in its long history. more..

Jan 15 (ET) Apparel from a series of Asian countries could be offered a reduction in EU and US tariffs after the tsunami devastated parts of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand and Maldives Islands at the end of last month. more..

Jan 15 (ACT) Unable to hold back the tears, the man stands crying in the street of the Sri Lankan town of Dambulla. He lost his daughter in the tsunami of December 26. The daughter did not die in Dambulla, the town where they lived in the center of the country which the waves did not reach. more..

Jan 15 (TN) The government security establishment Friday informed the Jaffna Police that two soldiers one from the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and the other from the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN)navy had died suddenly in their stations. Police teams from Manipay and Kayts Friday handed over the bodies of the two soldiers to the Jaffna Teaching Hospital, more..

Jan 15 (TN) Mr.Jim Karygiannis, Canadian Liberal MP for Scarborough-Agincourt visited Tamil’s Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) Head Office in Kilinochchi Friday. He was received by Mr.K.P.Regi, Executive Director of TRO, and Mr.Lawrence Christy, Planning Director of TRO. more..

Jan 15 (TN) The sudden death of Mr.S.Pathmanathan also known as Eelathunathan, President of the Trincomalee district branch of the TULF and a member of the central working committee of the TULF has come as a great shock to Tamils of the country, said Mr.R.Sampanthan, more..

Jan 15 (TN) Five-member team of the Medicines Sans Frontier (MSF) of France left Trincomalee Friday when a fifty member medical team of the Indian Navy took charge of the Kuchchaveli government hospital located about thirty km north of east Trincomalee to serve the people of the area affected by Tsunami disaster, more..

Jan 15 (TN) “All Canadian aid for Tsunami relief would be channelled through our own organisations and equitable distribution is the bottom line of our humanitarian aid for relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction” said Hon. Jim Karygiannis, P.C., M.P., in a meeting with Mr. S.P.Thamilchelvan, more..

Jan 15 (TN) Calling upon President Chandrika Kumaratunga's UPFA government, all political parties and the LTTE to actively promote a fair distribution of relief assistance to the tsunami victims, Colombo-based Heads of Missions of the European Union on Friday cautioned that there should be no politicisation of relief efforts. more..

Jan 15 (IL) Dear Editor: I read a story published by you on Jan. 14, 2005 about Mahanayakas of Malwatta and Asgiriya preaching UNP delegation to shed differences and work together to rebuild the lives of people affected by the tsunami. They further go on to say that we should rebuild Temples, Kovils, Churches and Mosques. more..

Jan 15 (HRW) The rebel LTTE are recruiting children affected by the tsunami for use as soldiers, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch said that the Tamil Tigers, who were already recruiting large numbers of child soldiers, now may seek to replace forces lost to the tsunami with child recruits. more..

Jan 15 (ABC) Dalugoda Gilbert, 70, sits among the ruins of his home in the suburbs of Galle, southern Sri Lanka. more..

Jan 15 (AP) A small Buddhist congregation has sold one of its temples to raise money for tsunami victims. Abbot Thick Nguyen handed the Canadian Red Cross a check Monday for $500,000 (US$405,000), representing the entire proceeds from the sale of the Vietnamese Buddhist Congregation's temple in the town east of Vancouver in the Fraser Valley. more..

Jan 15 (AT) The JVP is advocating a written Memorandum of Understanding between all parties to agree to stall all their party agendas for a period of three years, or some other agreed period of time. more..