May 13 (TN) A demonstration was held in Jaffna town Thursday condemning the firing protesting civilians at Santhiveli by Sri Lankan security forces on Monday. An elderly person was killed and several others, including schoolchildren were wounded. more..

May 13 (UNI) Sri Lanka has hit the jackpot in this year's ''Hottest New Hotels and Resorts''rankings published in the latest May edition of the prestigious US-based travel magazine, 'Conde Nast Traveler'. Of the 116 hotels from 38 countries ranked in the magazine's Hot list 2005, four were from Sri Lanka, more..

May 13 (Reuters) Prices of Sri Lanka teas fell at the latest auction as the poor quality on offer failed to interest buyers, brokers said. Prices of high grown teas like Broken Orange Pekoes (BOPs) from high-altitude regions such as Nuwara Eliya fell by 15.00 to 20.00 rupees per kg at the auction held on Tuesday and Wednesday. more..

May 13 (CI) Sri Lanka may not have a coach yet - although Jayantha Dharmadasa, the new chairman, has optimistically promised one by the week's end - but they do now at least have a captain as Marvan Atapattu was reappointed on Thursday for the forthcoming series against West Indies and India. more..

May 13 (LBO) The Asian Human Rights Commission has pulled up three cases of gross medical negligence in local hospitals in the past two weeks alone, saying victims have no way to get redress. One 48 year old mother had her healthy leg accidentally amputated, while another died after transfusion of a wrong blood type at the Negombo Base hospital. more..

May 13 (LM) Any possibility of Tsunami Reconstruction Funds proceeding from the Kandy Donors conference leaking into LTTE hands for Post Conflict Reconstruction will come in for intense scrutiny at the historic May 16th. Donor Conference, political analysts said. more..

May 13 (LM) The Japanese delegation will raise concerns about the allocation of Donor funds in an unambiguous manner when the Donor Forum opens at the Earl's Regency Hotel in Kandy, Special Japanese envoy for Tsunami Reconstruction Mr.Yasushi Akashi told a Press briefing more..

May 13 (AT) Scientist Dr. Thrishantha Nanayakkara (who was refused an Entry Visa by the French Embassy in Colombo to attend a International Conference on robotics in Barcelona, Spain), told the "Asian Tribune" that Sri Lanka unfortunately had no mechanism by which his university or a relevant Ministry could apply for entry visas more..

May 13 (AT) Yasushi Akashi, a former UN undersecretary general and Japanese special envoy to Sri Lanka's peace process already arrived to island and met local leading government officials and parties connected to the peace process after the tsunami, the government sources said. more..

May 13 (BBC) The Geneva based United Nations Human Rights Committee has instructed the Sri lankan government to pay compensation to Tony Michael Fernando who went to the Commission against the judgement of the supreme court of Sri Lanka. more..

May 13 (AT) President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL), Desmond Fernando, has come under fire for issuing a partisan message of condolence on the killing of D. Sivaram without expressing similar sympathies to other journalists killed by the LTTE. Some lawyers see Desmond Fernando as a pro-UNP lawyer playing politics. more..

May 13 (AT) A mysterious group calling itself Theraputhabahaya Balakaya (Therapuththabhaya brigade) is claiming responsibility for the killing of D. Sivaram, the editor of the LTTE TamilNet. The letter is signed by one Senpathi Mayadunne, Commander Western province Division On 2nd May 2005, in Colombo. more..

May 13 (AT) The leader of the oldest Tamil political party urged the international community to follow the Indian example and support the demand for democratic political rights of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. V.Ananadasangharee, leader of the TULF welcomed the stand taken by New Delhi that “India will never accept dictatorship”. more..

May 13 (PT) The Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapakse has hailed the operationalisation of FTA between Pakistan and Sri Lanka and expressed the hope that it will open new opportunities for economic cooperation to the mutual benefit of the two countries. more..

May 13 (TN) The Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRCS) was awarded the prestigious Spanish Red Cross Society Gold medal for 2005 in recognition of its outstanding work towards the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Mr. Jagath Abeyasinghe, President of SLRCS received the award on behalf of thousands of SLRCS volunteers more..

May 13 (SLA) Two vehicles of UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees), which refused to undergo routine checking, identification and declaration of items in the lorry after they reached KATTAIPARICHAN entry/exit point on 12th May 2005 around 1.45 p.m, had to turn back. more..

May 13 (SLA) The dead body of a youth with a gunshot injury in his head has been found by troops from the general area of VANDARAMOOLAI, BATTICALOA. According to a poster placed near the corpse, most probably by his assassins, the victim, WIMALENDRAN MANOJ KUMAR (25), a resident from the TRINCOMALEE area, was killed for supporting an LTTE rival faction. more..

May 13 (SLA) School children in their uniforms and two TNA Members of Parliament (MP) were among a group about 300-400 protesters who marched up to the SLMM office on 12 May 2005 after they gathered in NALLUR, JAFFNA in order to deliver a protest memorandum over the SANDIVELI incident where one LTTE incited protester was killed. more..

May 13 (LM) When you're sick and tired of living, you don't have to get into politics to get on a terrorist's hit list - equally free and gratis and equally painful is the death you can experience at the Negombo hospital which notched up its second hit in a row on April 26th. more..

May 13 (LM) Pursuing the Sithy Nazeera case, the Daily Mirror Health Action Column has posed these questions to Dr.Uditha Herath, the Asst. secretary of the GMOA and has along with the Peoples Movement for the Rights of Patients taken this issue up with the health authorities. more..

May 13 (LT) Norway, the peace broker in Sri Lanka is making all efforts to bring the Wanni Tigers and the Sri Lankan government to forge a Joint Mechanism for relief operations in the North and East. Norwegian Peace Envoy Erik Solheim is more in Sri Lanka than in his country more..

May 13 (LT) A report from the ministry of Home Affairs of India says that western countries are trying to disintegrate South Asian countries by providing terrorist organizations in the region with funds, shelter and material support. more..

May 13 (AT) Norwegian Ambassador Hans Brattskar has held discussions with the leader of the LTTE in Kilinochchi today. The LTTE delegation led by political-wing leader S.Paramu Tamilselvan included several personnel from the LTTE peace secretariat. more..

May 13 (PRIU) President Chandrika Kumaratunga invited a delegation from the Muslim Peace Secretariat for discussions. The President briefed the delegation on the status of the negotiations with the LTTE on establishing a structure for post tsunami reconstruction in the six districts of the Northern and Eastern Provinces. more..

May 13 (AP) A Sri Lanka-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement will come into effect next month, Sri Lanka's trade minister said Friday, in a deal expected to double the amount of trade between the two. The agreement, signed in February will be operational from June 12, more..

May 13 (SN) 2005-05-11 a new organization was born called the National Movement to Protect Buddhist Schools. The inaugural meeting of the NMPBS was held in the All Ceylon Buddhist congress hall. The meeting was chaired by the Most Noble Venerable Waligama Ghanarathana Maha Nayake thero of the august Amarapura sect, more..

May 13 (Xinhua) Central Bank announced here Friday that it decided to raise its key interest rates by 25 basis points, the first time for the bank to increase its rates in six months. The repurchase interest rate which is being used to drain money from the banking system will stand at 7.75 percent and the reverse-repurchase rate at 9.25 percent from 13 May 2005. more..

May 13 (CI) Thillanga Sumathipala's immigration fraud case was re-started on Thursday as a Colombo court heard submissions concerning the payment of approximately £1000 by the cricket board to a suspected mafia assassin as travel expenses for a recreational trip to watch the 1999 World Cup. more..

May 13 (CI) Arjuna Ranatunga, the former World Cup-winning captain and current Member of Parliament, has ended a self-imposed exile from the Sri Lankan board and accepted an invitation to be Sri Lanka's representative on the ICC's Cricket Committee. Ranatunga is also tipped to become the chairman of Sri Lanka Cricket's own cricket committee. more..

May 13 (SAMN) The Cabinet has withdrawn the controversial Cabinet paper on restructuring the Ceylon Electricity Board and the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, government sources said yesterday. The JVP ministers had walked out of the Cabinet meeting last week following a heated argument with government ministers and President Chandrika Kumaratunga. more..

May 13 (SAMN) The crisis in the Sri Dalada Maligawa ended yesterday with former Diyawadana Nilame Neranjan Wijeyaratne handing over the Maligawa keys to Buddhist Affairs Commissioner W.D. Sunil in the presence of the Asgiriya and Malwatte Mahanayaka Theras. more..

May 13 (SAMN) A UNP parliamentarian said some senior UPFA ministers were playing a double game when on one side appearing to support the President in her efforts to resurrect the economy and solve the ethnic problem while making public speeches strongly critical of the government. more..

May 13 (LNP) A mysterious sword and spear group calling itself the `Therapuththabhaya Balakaya` yesterday claimed responsibility for the killing of senior journalist Dharmaretnam Sivaram and warned that others who did harm to the motherland would face the same fate. more..

May 13 (LNP) The UNP on Wednesday attributed the suffering of the people to the government`s concentration on its political agenda and its failure to carry out the task of governing the country. This was revealed by Parliamentarian Bandula Gunawardane during a media briefing at the office of the leader of the Opposition. more..

May 13 (DN) THE donor agencies and the international community have expressed satisfaction on the manner in which foreign aid is being dispersed to reach people even in the remotest areas in Sri Lanka, said Finance Minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama. more..

May 13 (AP) A gagged and bound suspected Tamil Tiger rebel was found shot dead in Sri Lanka's volatile east on Friday, a day after a gun battle in the same region left four policemen injured, the military and police said. A note attached to the body of the slain man found in Batticaloa, more..

May 13 (AFP) The United States offered Friday a one-year debt relief to Sri Lanka and said it was also moving to rebuild fishing harbours, schools and 100 playgrounds in tsunami-hit areas. US ambassador Jeffery Lunstead said Washington agreed to freeze Sri Lanka's loan repayments more..

May 13 (PTI) The US supports the move to establish a joint mechanism between the government and Tamil Tigers even though Washington would not give any aid directly to the rebels. US ambassador to Sri Lanka, Jeffery J. Lunstead, said they believed the proposed "joint mechanism" between Colombo and the rebel LTTE will be effective in distributing tsunami aid. more..

May 13 (BBC) Media watchdogs and journalists expressed concern that leading journalists received death threats from a mysterious group. New York based media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged the authorities to find the culprits. more..

May 14 (TN) Liberation Tigers' demand for an independent administrative arrangement and funds to rehabilitate and rebuild the infrastructure of the Tamil homeland is rooted on the fact that for the past 56 years the Sinhala Nation has resolutely exercised its monopoly power more..

May 14 (TN) The serious lack of normalcy in the Tamil areas due to continuing military occupation and restrictions on civilians’ livelihoods, even three years after the mutual ceasefire agreement was signed, is leading to severe frustrations amongst the people, more..

May 14 (TN) "We are alarmed by the rising threats against our colleagues, and call on authorities to find those responsible for these crimes. All sides of this conflict must respect the rights of journalists and help safeguard the free flow of information in Sri Lanka," more..

May 14 (AT) Expressing president’s total commitment to the setting up a Joint Mechanism between the Government, LTTE and other parties, Mano Tittawella, senior advisor to Sri Lanka president and chairman of the TAFREN nevertheless emphasized that reconstruction work could also be undertaken even without a joint mechanism, more..

May 14 (AT) Yesterday the British government updated its warning to travelers urging them not to go to north and the east of Sri Lanka because of terrorist threats and tit-for-tat killing among the rival Tamil political parties. “Much of the north and east of Sri Lanka also remains heavily mined,” it added. more..

May 14 (AT) Indian foreign minister K Natwar Singh will pay a three-day visit to Colombo next month primarily to co-chair the joint commission but diplomatic circles here expect the visit between June 9 and 11 to provide an occasion for an in-depth discussion on the LTTE factor. more..

May 14 (AT) The remaining 65 unidentified bodies of the tsunami victims who died in the Boxing Day tragedy in Sri Lanka will be buried at the Borella cemetery in the capital next Monday. As the religious identity of the victims is not known, arrangements have been made to conduct Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Christian funeral rights at the burial. more..

May 14 (AT) A new Indian three-wheel manufacturer ARD Exim-Asok Rock Drills Private Ltd has entered the Sri Lankan auto market introducing their three wheelers and Tractors tying up with Sri Lanka business conglomerate, Ceylinco consolidated. more..

May 14 (HT) Just three days ahead of the international donors' conference on post-tsunami reconstruction in Sri Lanka, the LTTE has pointed to some unresolved issues in the debate on the proposed Government-LTTE joint mechanism for reconstruction in the Tamil-speaking North Eastern Province. more..

May 14 (LBO) Insurance costs will go up by one third for Sri Lankan hotels, as insurance companies factor tsunami risk into future insurance coverage. "Premiums went up a little this year because tsunami cover was introduced. Insurance cover didn’t extend to tsunami risk before," more..

May 14 (SB) Four members of Sri Lanka's Parliament are in Honolulu through tomorrow to learn how to better prepare to deal with natural disasters like the Dec. 26 tsunami, which killed an estimated 31,000 people across Sri Lanka and left about 1 million homeless. more..