Lanka News – Lanka Gazette – Sri Lanka News Portal

UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has summoned a meeting of the youth branch of the party, which will be held today, according to a party member who wished to maintain anonymity. The party member revealed that Wickremesinghe had already drawn up a document for presentation at the Youth Working Committee meeting, in which the members pledge their support to the Opposition Leader.  It is said the document also states that the youth branch want Wickremesinghe to remain as Opposition Leader. Recently introduced reforms by a special committee state that most office-bearing positions within the UNP should be decided by secret ballot. Continue Reading

“Ranil and Malik did not deliver – I did”: Sabir Hussein

Sensational new information obtained by The Sunday Leader show that the former Chairman of the UNP and Ranil Wickremesinghe-confidant, Malik Samarawickrema, collected on behalf of UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe a huge Rs. 48 million from one “donor”. Swedish based Sri Lankan businessman, Sabir Hussein, 50, contacted The Sunday Leader with details. Continue Reading

Former refugee Prapaharan Thambithurai was sentenced to six
months in jail Friday after pleading guilty to raising money for the
Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group dedicated to creating a separate Tamil
state in Sri Lanka. Continue Reading

Sri Lanka’s state owned corporations  and companies which account for a large portion of the nation’s economic output and employ a large, some might say disproportionately  large, share  of the work force   have  been decapitated.  Which is to say their heads have been removed.

While this might sound alarming, fear not, for new heads have  been grafted onto these companies  from different bodies.   This Frankenstein situation   may sound horrific but the reality is  that  most of these corporations weren’t doing particularly  well with their old heads.  So there is every chance they will do better, or at least not significantly worse with their new CEO’s, Chairpersons, etc. Continue Reading

Approximately 8.5 million rupees collected last July by school children for the Uthuru Mithuru Fund, never found its way to development projects in the North.

The Fund was established by the Education Ministry ostensibly for the construction of a railway station at Elephant’s Pass.

Children in schools in the south were asked to donate to help their uthuru mithuru or northern friends.  The money donated by the school children was supposed to be used for development projects in the North, primarily the reconstruction of the Railway line to Jaffna.  But now almost a year after the funds were collected construction has yet to commence and the money is, according to the former Minister for Education, tied up in various accounts scattered across the country. Continue Reading

UNP MP Sajith Premadasa declared that he would continue with his Jathika Jeewaya Programme despite being ordered by UNP General Tissa Attanyake to stop all meetings being held under the programme last week.

“I will go ahead – I will give the meetings a singular effort”, said Premadasa.
Decision to stop these meetings at the electorate level under the programme, which aimed at bringing Premadasa to the post of party leader, was made following an order by the party leadership. Continue Reading

The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be stepping down from his position as the Chairman of the Group of 15 (G -15) and handing over the title to President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the G-15 Summit which will be held in Tehran on May 17.

The summit for the Heads of State, meeting for the 14th time, represents and accounts for one third of the world population as well as fast developing economies. Though 17 in total, the group has held on to the name G-15 and consists of the following – Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, India, Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Continue Reading

One year after the end of the war between the security forces and the LTTE, 73,000 displaced persons still remain in IDP camps in the North.
Following the end of the war, the resettlement of the war-displaced became a post war crisis faced by the country, which also raised widespread international concern. The announcement and celebrations of liberation were soon overcome by calls to rehabilitate and resettle thousands of persons displaced in the North and East due to the three decade-long war. Continue Reading

Senior members within the United National Party are demanding that Party Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe accounts for hundreds of millions of rupees worth of election campaign funds allegedly handed directly to him. Continue Reading