News stories by Amantha Perera, page 6

KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka, Jul 14 (IPS) - People are willing to wait a long time for a few minutes in the hands of Aloysius Patrickeil, a 32-year-old barber who is part-owner of a small shop close to the northern town of Kilinochchi, 320 km from Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo.

VALIPUNAM, Sri Lanka, Jul 07 (IPS) - The village of Valipunam, 322 km north of Sri Lanka's capital Colombo, occupies one of the remotest corners of the country's former war zone. The dirt roads are impossible to navigate, there are no street lights, telephone connections are patchy and the nearest police post is miles away, closer to the centre of the battle-scarred Mullaitivu district.

COLOMBO, Jun 30 (IPS) - What's the connection between weather forecasts and the mosquito-borne dengue virus? It's not just a question for science nerds; in Sri Lanka, health officials believe answering this question could save lives.

COLOMBO, May 30 (IPS) - Stuck in mid-day rush hour traffic, commuters packed tight into a tin-roofed bus in Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, peer expectantly up at the sky that is beating a savage heat down on the city.

COLOMBO, May 21 (IPS) - It has been five years since Sri Lanka's brutal three-decades-long civil conflict came to an end in May 2009, but for the country's youth, true national reconciliation is still a long way off.

YANGON, May 06 (IPS) - Between 2008 and 2013, when Myanmar remained largely closed off to the rest of the world, it suffered a terrible toll at the hands of nature that remained largely unknown.

YANGON, May 05 (IPS) - Kyaw Kyaw Aung is just 22, but already has dark memories of days when information, sometimes of the mundane kind, could land you in a dark cell for a very long time in Myanmar, a Southeast Asian nation that was under military rule for decades.

COLOMBO, Apr 29 (IPS) - Five years after the end of a bloody and protracted civil war, Sri Lanka has begun its first survey of families of the missing in order to assess their needs.

YANGON, Mar 31 (IPS) - For over a quarter of a century Uhla Min has lived under the spell of ‘The Lady', the popular nickname for Nobel Peace Laureate Aung Sung Suu Kyi.

COLOMBO, Mar 24 (IPS) - As Sri Lanka steadfastly refuses any external inquiry into human rights abuses allegedly committed when the government pushed a military victory over Tamil rebels in its decades-long sectarian conflict, right groups say the global community is left with no option but to push for an international investigation.