SRI LANKA: Latest Elections Reinforce Status Quo

The latest elections in Sri Lanka serve as yet another reminder that despite all its follies, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government is unshakable.

SRI LANKA: Parliamentarian Breaks Silence on Domestic Violence

She became famous playing the role of ‘Pabha’, a poor young girl in love with a rich man in a long running hit television series here. But these days, Upeksha Suwarnamali is better known for her real-life role: A victim of domestic violence turned champion of abused women.

SRI LANKA: Cricket Unites Fractured Island

Twenty-year-old Veethirasa Winston is planning his schedule meticulously for the next few weeks, making sure he keeps his diary free on days when Sri Lanka’s national team takes the cricket field.

Elephants Find a Place in Cricket Cup

Sri Lanka goes into a frenzy this month as it plays co-host to the 2011 Cricket World Cup. Conservationists hope the national pasttime will share national and international media attention with an endangered Sri Lankan resident: the elephant.

SRI LANKA: East Reels Under Triple Whammy

The name Mawilaru will be indelibly linked to the history of over 25 years of civil strife in Sri Lanka, especially its bloody end. It was here that the final phase of the war was triggered in June 2006.

SRI LANKA: Extreme Weather Changes Could Follow Floods

Weather experts warned Sri Lankan to be prepared for extreme weather changes with hardly any notice following devastating floods here that have affected over one million people.

SRI LANKA: Media Freedom Still Distant

January is indelibly linked to the tumultuous recent history of the media in Sri Lanka. Two years ago, on Jan. 8 Lasantha Manilal Wickrematunge, editor of the The Sunday Leader newspaper, was murdered while on his way to work.

SRI LANKA: Fund Shortfall Slows Post-War Development

Some 19 months since the end of Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war, over 325,000 civilians displaced by the final bout of fighting between late 2007 and May 2009 have returned to live in their villages or with their relatives.

SRI LANKA: Doctors Put Life During Conflict Under Microscope

During the last phase of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2008, information on the intensified fighting had slowed to a trickle. But in their November 2010 submissions to a government commission looking into the final days of the conflict, a group of doctors who served in the war zone have shed light on living conditions that were "not fit for even animals".

SRI LANKA: A Powerful President Promises Prosperity

Percy Mahinda Rajapaksa is the quintessential Sri Lankan politician - someone who senses the subtle shifts in the political landscape quickly and can turn a narrowest of victories into the strongest of legacies.

SRI LANKA: Rising Bread Prices Expose Trade Vulnerabilities

There was a time when being a breadseller here in Colombo enabled Charmindha to have modest dreams. But the teenager from Sri Lanka’s rural south has been seeing his daily earnings slide in the last two months, and indications are that’s not going to change anytime soon.

SRI LANKA: Peace Dividend Perks Up Economy

The Taj Samudra, the flagship property here of Taj Hotels India, sits on what is arguably the best location in Sri Lanka’s capital. Overlooking the Indian Ocean, it is the only five-star hotel in this city from which guests can walk out straight into the largest sea-fronted green esplanade in the country.

SRI LANKA: ‘Tigers’ Become Tourists

The younger ones in the group tried to imitate the older boys, in their teens and early 20s, who wear the latest fashion promoted by Hindi and South Indian movie stars – faded denim jeans, tight T-shirts, and oversized belts hanging nonchalantly around their slim waists. Alongside them, the handful of women wore brightly coloured ‘shalwar kamiz’ (traditional South Asian dress) that fluttered in the wind.

HEALTH-SRI LANKA: All-Out War on Dengue Fever Eases Deaths

An aggressive public health and information programme is giving Sri Lanka a key weapon in its battle against the deadly dengue fever, bringing it under control after hitting epidemic proportions in the last two years.

SRI LANKA: Constitutional Change Undermines Political Checks

If Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa appears unassailable after the September ratification of a constitutional amendment lifting a limit on presidential terms, blame the main opposition party.

Sri Lanka Shuns West, Finds Solace in Emerging Powers’ Arms

The European Union’s decision to suspend trade preferences for Sri Lankan exports may have finally come into force, but the island nation is not budging an inch on any of the powerful bloc’s recommendations on its controversial human rights record.

SRI LANKA: Former Battle Zone In Search of A Business Boom

It is an odd location to open a new restaurant, right in front of a row of buildings whose roofs have been blown off by artillery fire and whose walls are pockmarked by gunfire.

SRI LANKA: No Peace in Sight in Human-vs-Elephant War

Dusk creeps over Konweva like a black shroud slowly draping over the village. The edges of its paddy fields, where the agricultural plains meet the surrounding thick shrubs, are first to be blanketed in the darkness. Already, there are signs that the night will not be peaceful.

SRI LANKA: War Over, But Women Wage Battle For Survival

It was a typically hot, humid day in this eastern coastal village. The sun burned down from a cloudless sky, roasting the skin as an angry sea breeze swatted the faces of the few foolish enough to venture out onto the deserted main road that runs through town.

SRI LANKA: New Tremors, Old Nightmares

Janoshini Maurasini shakes like a leaf each time the sea belches a thunderous roar. And the 29-year-old mother of two has good reason to be nervous: Maurasini only narrowly escaped with her life in the Indian Ocean tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, which killed over 35,000 of her fellow Sri Lankans within minutes.

SRI LANKA: After Decades of Bloodshed, Home Calls

For almost two decades, Athanayakemudiyanselage Punchibanda lived without hope of ever returning here to his native village.