Jan 23 (IO) It is four weeks since the tsunami came. My town, Dickwella,in the south of the island, was one of the places hardest hit. Five people were killed near my home. The houses at the end of my road were completely destroyed. My family was fortunate because we only lost our possessions. more..

Jan 23 (AP) Norway's Foreign Minister Jan Petersen _ acting as a peace envoy between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels _ met with Sri Lanka's prime minister Sunday, a day after holding talks with the top guerrilla leader to discuss the flow of relief aid to tsunami-hit areas of the country. more..

Jan 23 (TN) UNP Deputy leader and Gampha District Parliamentarian Karu Jayasuriya, after visiting the south eastern coastal areas, said Friday, "Though several thousands of lives have been lost in the disaster it is creditable that rescue operations have been almost completed in the South. more..

Jan 23 (OD) Loving Sri Lanka means crying a lot. I learned that as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1980s. Then the tears flowed as I watched the death toll rise from civil war, terrorism, riots, massacres and assassinations. The ethnic and political factions involved were trying to shape the country's destiny through destruction, a trend that continues today. more..

Jan 23 (GI) Sri Lankan lay bricks as they repair the floor of a beach hotel in Galle, some 120kms south of Colombo, 22 January 2005. more..

Jan 23 (Hindu) The leader of the LTTE, V. Prabakaran, today charged the Sri Lankan Government with "misusing" the international aid flowing into the island-nation after the tsunami, and wanted the international community to ensure "equitable distribution" of aid to the affected people. more..

Jan 23 (SAMN) Task Force for Rebuilding the Nation (TAFREN) has finalised the plan for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the fourteen tsunami-affected districts along the coastal belt. The total cost of implementing the plan has been estimated at a massive US$ 3,484.3 million. more..

Jan 23 (SAMN) With the school term scheduled to start on Tuesday, January 25, for tsunami-devastated schools, authorities in the Kalutara district are facing a problem as the displaced people are still housed in some of the schools. more..

Jan 23 (SAMN) The military believes that there is no requirement for international NGOs to deploy their own helicopters for post-tsunami relief operations. An authoritative security official said that the SLAF top brass had advised the relevant authorities against the ongoing moves to allow international NGOs to operate choppers. more..

Jan 23 (SAMN) The United National Party (UNP) has submitted a set of proposals to President Chandrika Kumaratunga for broad based discussion as the way forward in mobilising the nation and restoring normalcy as quickly as possible in the aftermath of the December 26 tsunami. more..

Jan 23 (ANN) LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran Saturday ended four weeks of speculation about his whereabouts by surfacing to meet a Norwegian delegation led by Foreign Minister Jan Petersen. "I met with him. Obviously, he is alive," Petersen told journalists after conferring with Prabhakaran at the LTTE’s Kilinochchi headquarters. more..

Jan 23 (ANN) Sri Lanka’s finest sprinters in the recent history, Susanthika Jayasinghe, Damayanthi Darsha and Sugath Tilekaratne, have all lost their placing among the best 100 sprinters in their respective events following their disastrous performance during the last year. more..

Jan 23 (TN) Plan drawn up as a blueprint for post-tsunami development by the “Task force to Rebuild the Nation” (TAFREN), one of the three committees comprising the Center for National Operations (CNO) set up by President Chandrika Kumaratunge, announced Monday, is assailed as being immoral, hastily produced, too centralized more..

Jan 23 (SLA) LTTE has made and abortive attempt to abduct a female civilian from the general area of MANIPPAY, about 07 km north of JAFFNA on 22 January 2005. The girl named J. NISHANTHANI (22) has manage escaped from the LTTE when some unidentified LTTE cadres attempted to abduct her while she was returning home from a relative’s house in the same area. more..

Jan 23 (SLA) Naval troops on 22 January 2005, had observed a flotilla of about 25 Indian fishing trawlers poaching in Sri Lanka waters in the north of THALAIMANNAR. Similarly, naval troops had once again observed about 10 Indian fishing trawlers poaching in the general sea area of VANKALAIPADU on 22 January 2005.

Jan 23 (AT) Norwegian facilitators led by Norways Foreign Minister Jan Peterson visited Kilinochchi on Staurday and met the delegation of the Tamil rebel outfit LTTE led by its reclusive leader Velupillai Prabakaran. more..

Jan 23 (AT) For the Tiger it is open season again. The LTTE is back to conscripting children. The evidence is overwhelming and comes from the most unimpeachable sources – from international agencies like the UNESCO and the Human Rights Watch, media organisations like the BBC and the Reuters more..

Jan 23 (AT) In the name of "Tamils residing in the UK", the LTTE has launched a signature campaign, appealing to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to provide tsunami relief directly to Sri Lanka's north and east which the Tamil Tigers claim as their own. more..

Jan 23 (AT) While Sri Lanka government authorities continue to say that all tsunami relief materials received from overseas should be channeled through them and that a parallel aid operation was unacceptable, LTTE continues to insist that it should be the sole distributor of all relief aid to the people in the north and east areas under its control. more..

Jan 23 (AT) Muttiah Muralidharan is now bowling against the Sri Lankan government from Prabhakaran’s end. He has declared publicly that the Sri Lankan government has not provided aid to the LTTE-controlled areas and Arjuna Ranatunga, the former captain of the World Cup, has denied as false. more..

Jan 23 (AT) The descent of Sri Lankan society into the lowest depths of violence was demonstrated unmistakably by the broad daylight killing of one of its highest symbols – Judge Sarath Ambepitiya, a fearless and independent judge who had passed severe sentences on criminals. more..

Jan 23 (Yahoo) Salomia, 3, a Sri Lankan tsunami survivor, whose parents are not to be found, holds a doll sitting atop a broken wall of her house in the town of Kalmunai on Sri Lanka's east coast January 23, 2005. more..

Jan 23 (AT) The National Post, a Canadian daily newspaper, has documented the criminal activities of the LTTE, the Sri Lankan Tamil terrorist group, both inside and outside Sri Lanka for almost a decade. more..

Jan 23 (LT) Minister of Cultural affairs and National Heritage Vijithe Herath went to Prof. K.Sivathamby’s house to hand over “Sahithya Rathna” award bestowed upon him at the National Literary awards ceremony. more..

Jan 23 (NT) The people who live along the devastated eastern coast of Sri Lanka are angry at the sea. The tsunami survivors aren’t spending much time in their refugee camps, said Jezima Ismail, a humanitarian activist who lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka. more..

Jan 23 (Reuters) Donors fear tsunami relief may not reach hundreds of thousands of displaced Sri Lankans because the government's approach to aid has created a real risk of graft and mismanagement, Western aid officials and watchdogs say. more..

Jan 23 (BBC) Malcolm Fleming has been part of the aid effort assisting those affected by the tsunami which devastated south east Asia. As media manager for Oxfam in Scotland, he was tasked with co-ordinating press and communications work in Sri Lanka. more..

Jan 23 (WPH) The line of sick and injured tsunami victims snakes through the refugee camp's makeshift clinic and up to Dr. Joseph Angelo, who has traveled from Bel Air, Md., to treat his native countrymen. "This area is totally neglected," says Dr. Angelo, 44, more..

Jan 23 (SO) Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, says the government is ready to work together with everybody, including civil society in rebuilding the nation. Petty differences, such as political, ethnic and religion should be forgotten, he said. more..

Jan 23 (AP) Sri Lanka's air force on Saturday detained two unassembled helicopters that arrived with tsunami aid supplies, saying they presented a potential threat to national security. more..

Jan 23 (AP) Sri Lanka's military reacted furiously Sunday to Tamil Tiger rebel claims that the armed forces plan to buy weapons using tsunami relief money. "Such terrible lies can come only from them (the Tigers)" said military spokesman Brig. Daya Ratnayake. more..

Jan 23 (Reuters) Tamil Tiger rebels held their first talks with Norwegian peace envoys since the tsunami on Saturday saying the disaster opened up new possibilities for a solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict. more..

Jan 23 (SLT) The home of Velayutham and Suganthini looked out upon a wide sandy beach dotted with coconut palm trees. Like many others in the village of Mallaittivu and elsewhere along the northeastern coast of Sri Lanka, theirs was a cinder-block hut with a thatched roof and sat close to the sea. more..

Jan 23 (HT) Even as it is limping back to normalcy after the devastating tsunami attack of December 26, Sri Lanka is seized by fear of a kamikaze attack by LTTE aircraft, rather like what New York saw on September 11, 2001. more..

Jan 23 (TP) A key partner of ruling UPFA has once again lashed out at the government over lack of unity in post-tsunami work. K D Lal Kantha, a government minister from the JVP, was quoted in the Daily Mirror as saying the leadership “has miserably failed to maintain with any degree of credibility the unity achieved with much difficulty to form this government. more..

Jan 23 (AFP) The Sri Lankan government has vehemently denied claims by Tamil Tiger rebels that it is using international aid for post-tsunami relief to purchase arms. A report on the Tamilnet website said Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the LTTE, had raised the issue with Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen more..

Jan 23 (GI) A Sri Lankan railways employee repairs damaged rail tracks at Sinegame, some 90kms south of Colombo, 23 January 2005. more..

Jan 23 (TA) THERE is no cricket in Sri Lanka at the moment. Those clubs that did not lose players, or grounds, or equipment have no time for games. The tsunami-ravaged nation's Test players are putting their efforts into three emergency camps, but have more ambitious long-term plans. more..

Jan 23 (BG) Jehan Raheem will draw on his 30 years of experience with the UN Development Program when he teaches a course at Brandeis University in the fall -- but not when he lectures about the tsunami and its aftermath. He was there. more..

Jan 23 (SLT) It was with considerable relief that we handed our last kit to a waiting child. As we headed back to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, I reflected on all that I had seen and experienced over the nine days I had spent working to ease the burden of the "rolling cloud of black water," the terrible twin tsunamis that had wreaked so much havoc on this small island nation. more..

Jan 24 (TN) The Tamil daily Eelanatham, published in Killinochchi, warned in its Sunday editorial that Chandrika Kumaratunge's government will again mislead the world on distribution of the aid received for tsunami relief. more..

Jan 24 (TN) A team of the Central Environmental Authority Saturday visited Jaffna district and held discussion with representatives of fisheries co-operative officials regarding strengthening the coastal areas by constructing buffer zones following Tsunami disaster, sources said. more..

Jan 24 (TN) "Liberation Tigers declare 26th January as a National Day of Mourning to remember those who lost their lives in the Tsunami disaster in Tamil Homelands and in other regions of South Asia. Let us all participate in the grief and sorrow of all who have lost their loved ones on this day," more..

Jan 24 (BBC) The government can not take responsibility for the decisions taken by "undemocratic" committees appointed by the President for post-tsunami reconstruction, a government minister said. more..

Jan 24 (AP) An Aberdeen professor leaves for Sri Lanka this week to help kids work through trauma from the Asian tsunami. Joseph Wehrman, professor of psychology and counseling at Northern State University, said children often can conquer trauma-related fears through play therapy. more..

Jan 24 (Yahoo) Sri Lankan tsunami survivors play a game of volleyball at a relief camp for the displaced in Thirukkovil on Sri Lanka's east coast January 23, 2005. more..

Jan 24 (IO) The town is meant to offer a blueprint for the new Sri Lanka; a shining example of how the one million people left homeless by the tsunami will live out the rest of their days. But the beleaguered Muslims of the southern coastal town of Hambantota are furious at what their government has in store for them. more..

Jan 24 (SAMN) The JVP is opposing the ongoing efforts to involve the LTTE in the rehabilitation and reconstruction process in the north and east provinces. They will not accept the LTTE’s participation as it would legitimize the group despite it being a proscribed organization abroad. more..

Jan 24 (SAMN) The Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA) Sunday vowed to go ahead with the countrywide strike action tomorrow charging that the Health Ministry and the Sri Lanka Medical Council had failed to respond positively to its demands. However it said hospitals in the tsunami hit areas would not be affected by the strike. more..

Jan 24 (SAMN) The Chairman of the Peoples Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) commenting on the controversial question of extending the date of the elections said Sunday that it was only through changing the constitution that the Presidential election can be postponed. more..