News stories by Amantha Perera, page 8

COLOMBO, Sep 22 (IPS) - It was a decision based on simple sums. Ananda, 28, from Weligama in the southern Sri Lankan district Matara decided to risk it all boarding a boat to Australia last year because he never had enough money.

COLOMBO, Sep 03 (IPS) - That it would be a visit fraught with diplomatic tension was undoubted. Navanetham ‘Navi' Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, was into the third day of her week-long visit from Aug. 25 to Aug. 31 to Sri Lanka when her entourage broke into animated discussion. 

COLOMBO, Aug 20 (IPS) - Gulam Rasul, chief meteorologist at the Pakistan Meteorological Department, was sure early this month that the second leg of the annual monsoon due in the latter half of the month was going to be bad. "Normally it peaks towards late August," Rasul told IPS.

COLOMBO, Aug 08 (IPS) - Life for a widow with young children in Sri Lanka's poor agrarian areas can be harsh. Families in remote areas like Anuradhapura in the North Central Province barely eke out a living through paddy cultivation or through vegetable and other crops planted in cleared jungle shrub - Chena cultivation as it is called.

COLOMBO, Aug 07 (IPS) - As he stood on the westernmost edge of Colombo's new harbour expansion, it was hard for Priyath Bandu Wickrema - the man tasked with reinventing the port as a regional giant - to cap his enthusiasm.

COLOMBO, Aug 02 (IPS) - A listing ship taking in water and facing up to the treacherous Indian Ocean monsoon is hardly cause for optimism.

COLOMBO, Jul 10 (IPS) - It has been four years since the guns fell silent in Sri Lanka's northern Vanni region, after almost three decades of ethnic violence. Unfortunately peace does not mean the end of hardship for the most vulnerable people here: the women.

COLOMBO, Jun 19 (IPS) - The Monetary Board of Sri Lanka's Central Bank, tasked with keeping the island's economy on an even keel, does not only keep tabs on exchange rates, gold prices and inflation – it also has an eye on a less obvious indicator of economic stability: water levels in the country's main reservoirs.

COLOMBO, Jun 14 (IPS) - For the first time since Sri Lanka's 30-year-long civil conflict drew to a bloody finish in May 2009, casting an eerie hush over the Northern Province that had grown accustomed to the sounds of war, there is a buzz in the air generated by the prospect of provincial elections that hold the promise of radical change.

COLOMBO, Jun 12 (IPS) - It was several hours before dawn when Afthas Niflal, a young fisherman in southern Sri Lanka, felt the sea start to rumble beneath him.