News Room : Monk arrested for failing to pay bill at The Hilton Colombo
A Buddhist monk who had failed to pay a bill amounting to Rs. 500 000 to the Hilton Hotel in Colombo has been arrested and remanded till 11 November. The monk from Mahiyangana had stayed at the Hilton for 18 days and also obtained food and drink from the hotel. He was later hospitalized when he fell ill during...
News Room : Booker prize winner Shehan Karunathilake responds to allegations of plagiarism
Sri Lankan author and Booker prize winner Shehan Karunathilake has responded to plagiarism allegations levelled by local journalist and Attorney Rajpal Abeynayake. Abeynayake has claimed Karunathilake had based his prize-winning novel ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ on a manuscript written by him and given to Karunathilake to obtain his support to publish the book. He has given interviews on...
News Room : First Monkeypox case reported in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s first case of monkeypox has been reported after an arrival from Dubai was detected as having been infected with the virus. The patient, a 20-year-old male had arrived in Sri Lanka on 1 November, the Ministry of Health said. Sources said the youth was referred to the National STD clinic on 2 November due to the presence of...
News Room : SLPP rebels ask EC to set process in motion forthwith – The Island
question delay in seeking required funding By Shamindra Ferdinando Prof. G.L.Peiris yesterday (03) said that if Local Government polls were to be held by March 20, 2023 as scheduled, the Election Commission (EC) should take tangible measures to set the process in motion.The former Foreign Minister Prof. Peiris said that the EC should ask for required...
News Room : Environmentalists: All official statistics on elephants bogus
By Rathindra Kuruwita Over 3,400 elephants have been killed since 2011, the last elephant census in the country, and the official elephant population figures are bogus, Sajeewa Chamikara of the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR) told The Island yesterday.Between 2002 and 2022, there were 4,954 elephant and 1,602 human deaths due to the human-elephant conflict.He said that the...
News Room : Imran Khan injured in shooting
Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan sustained a bullet injury in his leg after shots were fired at a rally in Gujranwala, yesterday.Azhar Mashwani, an official with Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, confirmed to Al Jazeera that the politician was shot in the leg but was not in danger. He was taken to a hospital in Lahore.Khan was...
News Room : Unpredictable Pakistan stun Proteas – The Island
British police officers deployed in Qatar for the World Cup will act as “cultural interpreters” between fans and local law enforcement, says Chief Constable Mark Roberts.Roberts, the national lead on football policing, said British police are not there to tell fans how to behave. “The focus is to try and prevent unfortunate misunderstandings where fans inadvertently cause offence,” he said. The...
News Room : About 10,909 bowser loads of diesel required for Maha cultivation season – The Island
question delay in seeking required funding By Shamindra Ferdinando Prof. G.L.Peiris yesterday (03) said that if Local Government polls were to be held by March 20, 2023 as scheduled, the Election Commission (EC) should take tangible measures to set the process in motion.The former Foreign Minister Prof. Peiris said that the EC should ask for required...
News Room : Prez asks Parliament to get its act together
President Ranil Wickremesinghe has, in a letter to Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, said that Parliament has not made satisfactory progress in making far-reaching systematic changes that the country needs.According to the Presidential Media Division, the President has said Parliament is responsible for the establishment of a National Assembly, the appointment of the Banking and Financial Services Committee, the Economic...
News Room : Dr. Pethiyagoda blames Lanka’s woes on rulers, bureaucrats not using common sense – The Island
By: M. A. Kaleel Sri Lanka could go bankrupt again and again in the years to come like Argentina, Dr. Rohan Pethiyagoda, one of Sri Lanka’s foremost biodiversity experts said at the convocation of the Sri Jayewardenepura University.The engineer turned biodiversity expert told the students that they were graduating at the most difficult time in Sri Lanka’s post-Independence history. “The fact...