‘s chosen coach turns the offer down stays at home

LONDON, June 11, 2007 (AFP) – Graham Ford has snubbed an offer to become India’s new coach in favour of staying on in his current role as director of cricket at English county Kent. The South African’s decision, announced on Monday, will come as a major blow to Indian cricket chiefs who believed they had […]

Onymous or anonymous? Perils of economic discourse in Sri Lanka

June 12, 2007 (LBO) – The theme of this column has been public policy about infrastructure. .  Over the past two and half years it has built up a significant international audience, on the basis of the over 550 posts (average of over 18 posts a month) we have made and over 3,100 comments that those […]

Sri Lanka to study critical rights report

June 12, 2007 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s president has called for “careful study” of a critical report that said the island is failing to investigate grave human rights abuses, a spokesman said Tuesday. President Mahinda Rajapakse was speaking after an international panel said a commission appointed to investigate 16 high profile cases, involving murder and […]

Close Shave

June 12, 2007 (AFP) – Tamil Tiger saboteurs came close to cutting off a large chunk of Sri Lanka’s electricity supply Tuesday by skirting tight security and setting off a bomb against a key power line, officials said.The device, which was rigged to a timer, was attached to a steel pylon located between a key […]

Power Blast

June 12, 2007 (LBO) – A blast ripped through a vital high voltage electricity transmission line in a suburb of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, but it failed to disrupt power supplies, officials and police said. It was not known who carried out the latest attack, but Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger guerillas had earlier bombed a […]

Sri Lanka film regulations may block positive coverage needed to boost tourism

June 11, 2007 (LBO) – Earlier this year, a foreign television crew working for the Travel Channel in London arrived in the country to do a documentary on the tourism hotspots. Travel Channel’s first priority was to visit and film the Dutch Galle fort in the southern coastal region of Sri Lanka. Then their troubles […]

Go Back

June 11, 2007 (AFP) – Sri Lanka has deported over 400 foreign nationals so far this year for overstaying their visas and working in the island illegally, the island’s immigration chief said Monday. Most of the deportees were of South Asian origin and had entered Sri Lanka on tourist visas, Controller of Immigration and Emigration, […]

Tourists to Nepal up 45 per cent since peace deal

KATHMANDU, June 11, 2007 (AFP) – Tourism arrivals to Nepal have shot up nearly 45 percent since former Maoist rebels ended their bloody “people’s war” at the end of 2006, officials said Monday. Landlocked and impoverished, Nepal relies on tourism for about four percent of the country’s economy employment for some 300,000 people. “The last […]

Saudi Arabia executions rise to new high this year

RIYADH, June 11, 2007 (AFP) – Not even the king can save a convict on death row for premeditated murder from the executioner’s sword in Saudi Arabia.However, Amnesty International, in its 2007 report, said “many defendants complained that they were not represented by lawyers and were not informed of the progress of their trial”.The death […]

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