Author: Nafeesa Suri

Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Sajith Premadasa go forward after no candidates gained 50% in first round. The Sri Lankan presidential election will be decided in a runoff, the country’s election body has said, after the top two candidates failed to win the mandatory 50% of votes to be declared winner. The Marxist-leaning Anura Kumara Dissanayake garnered the most votes in the first round of voting, with 39.5% of the counted ballots, while the opposition leader, Sajith Premadasa, finished second with 34%. All the remaining candidates, including the incumbent, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who trailed in third with 17%, have been disqualified, the…

As Sri Lanka gears up for the 2024 presidential elections, the political landscape is alive with a peculiar sort of buzz. The National People’s Power (NPP), formerly known as the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), is making waves with Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) at the helm. The JVP, sporting a rebranded logo – the Compass – seems to have mastered the art of political chameleonism. But beware, dear voter, for while the façade may change, the essence remains troublingly the same. Let’s first examine the heart of the matter – the economy. Sri Lanka’s economic woes are no secret. The island…

Au revoir Paris, Hola LA. In a nutshell, that was the just completed ceremony of the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad. It was Tom Cruise leaping off the rim of the Stade de France to take the Olympic flag from LA Mayor Karen Bass and Simone Biles. As the guitar riffs of H.E.R. filled the air, Cruise then exited on a motorbike to deliver the flag to a sunny West Coast. It was the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish and Olympic fixture Snoop Dogg getting into the pre-recorded groove down in Long Beach. It wasn’t telling of the full scope of Los Angeles and no mention was made of Snoop’s…

Sri Lanka will get about $600 million, on a staggered basis, from the Asian Development Bank after the International Monetary Fund releases the second tranche of a $2.9 billion bailout for the crisis-hit country, an official said on Tuesday. Sri Lanka is inching out of its worst financial crisis in decades, triggered by record-low foreign exchange reserves last year that saw its economy contract 7.8% in 2022. The island’s economy has been gradually stabilising after locking down a four-year programme with the IMF in March. Its first review is expected to be approved by the global lender next week, which…

The spacecraft that ferried India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander-rover duo to the moon has returned home — sort of. In a surprise announcement on Monday (Dec. 4), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said it had moved Chandrayaan-3’s propulsion module out of lunar orbit and placed it high above Earth for a bonus mission, where it now survives on leftover fuel. The new experiment will demonstrate technologies that will help Indian scientists bring samples from the moon to Earth someday, ISRO said. The propulsion module, a box-shaped component of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft powered by solar panels, now circles Earth every two weeks. ISRO has not revealed what…

Over half a century ago, India’s then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi talked about the staggering challenge for developing nations: to industrialize without harming the environment. “On the one hand the rich look askance at our continuing poverty — on the other, they warn us against their own methods,” she told a United Nations event in Stockholm in 1972, the first global conference to make the environment a major issue. “We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people,” she added. Her words have never been more relevant. The…

Islamabad, Pakistan – A prominent rights activist has been allegedly abducted by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies a day after he was arrested for addressing a protest to demand free cross-border movement with neighbouring Afghanistan. Manzoor Pashteen, founder of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (Pashtun Protection Movement or PTM) rights group, was on his way to Turbat town from the border town of Chaman in Balochistan province when he was arrested by police on Monday afternoon. Islamabad, Pakistan – A prominent rights activist has been allegedly abducted by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies a day after he was arrested for addressing a protest to demand free cross-border…

The rapporteurs note that Sharif, an Ary News TV anchor who was a fierce critic of corruption in Pakistan and the military’s sway over its civilian governments, had been the target of 16 complaints (eight according to Pakistan) since a change of government in April 2022. They also point to the letter that Sharif wrote to the Chief of Justice of Pakistan three months after the change of government reporting death threats against him – a letter that remained unanswered. “It seems that nothing was done to investigate these claims and to safeguard Mr. Arshad Sharif’s life,” the rapporteurs say. Fearing for…

The support the government and people of Maldives has for the independence of Palestine, will never falter, says President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. The president made these remarks in his address to the public in commemoration of Republic Day, on Saturday morning. The archipelago nation became a republic in 1968, after many years as a monarchy and celebrates its Republic Day on November 11 each year. As such, during his address, the president emphasized on the atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. He stressed that the hearts of Maldivian citizens are weighed down by Israel’s inhumane slaughter of Palestinian…

Several Russian soldiers explained how the Ukrainian Armed Forces gained a foothold on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast by opening up about the Battle of Krynky to BBC journalists. “Yes, they (Ukrainians) are on our side (of the river). They have entrenched themselves in the Krynky area. There are definitely about 500 Ukrainians there,” said soldiers from one of the occupiers’ battalions,” one of the Russian soldiers told the BBC. They claim that before capturing Krynky, several Ukrainian reconnaissance groups traveled along the occupied Dnipro riverbank in Gazelles and Zhigulis, dressed in Russian military, firefighter, or Emergency…