Rajapaksa sworn in new Chief Justice Mohan Peiris to replace Sri Lanka's first woman chief justice who was impeached by the parliament in a controversial move.
India welcomed resolution of the political crisis in Sri Lanka and exuded confidence that relations between the two countries will continue to move on in an upward trajectory.
Sri Lanka government will soon be framing anti-corruption laws to eradicate the possibility of match fixing in cricket, Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage has told the Parliament.
The arrested man is Charles Gnanakone.
The first part of the Budget Session of Parliament concluded on Friday with the Rajya Sabha witnessing a low as some All India Anna All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam members broke mikes on the chairman's table.
Sonia Gandhi is expected to unveil Congress' strategy on Monday in the backdrop of opposition flak over issues like the VVIP chopper deal, Italian marines and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam threat to pull out of UPA on Sri Lankan Tamils problem.
Pakistan's security establishment is in a bind over evidence suggesting the Lashkar-e-Tayiba was behind the Mumbai attacks and the assault on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore as it had assured Western powers after the 2001 strike on Indian Parliament that it would keep a lid on the banned group's activities.
Rajapaksa was appointed as the premier on October 26 by President Maithripala Sirisena after sacking Ranil Wickremesinghe, plunging the nation into a constitutional crisis.
Continuing the war of words over the Lankan Tamils issue, Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam chief M Karunanidhi on Friday slammed his arch rival and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa for initially criticising the prime minister for his statement in Parliament on a United States-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka and later welcoming India's stand while claiming credit for herself.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam has decided to keep distance from both Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha elections and the decision was not related to developments in the 2G case, party leader T R Baalu said on Monday.
'Human trafficking from Bangladesh is a regular phenomenon and those people come here to work or in search of greener pastures. They are all over the country. We are giving them legal recognition and making them citizens so that they don't have to live in fear,' says R Nataraj, AIADMK MLA from Tamil Nadu.
In a Sri Lankan House of 225 members, the cut-off figure comes to 113. With Wickremesinghe side touching 102 and Rajapaksa's team at 101, the three-party Tamil National Alliance with 16 members and the left-leaning Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna with 6 members hold the key. But with the latter declaring that they will not support either formation in a vote count,that leaves the TNA as the deciding factor, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
A Member of Parliament and two other politicians from Tamil Nadu were on Tuesday deported by Sri Lankan immigration authorities after they landed in Colombo to attend the funeral of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran's mother, who died on Sunday.Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi leader and MP Thol Thirumavalan and others were deported back to India from the international airport in Colombo."They have been deported upon their arrival,"said a Lankan leader.
Sri Lanka's Minister for Economic Development, Basil Rajapakse's visit to New Delhi on Thursday for what is described as "regular high level consultations" comes shortly before a scheduled meeting of a Parliamentary Select Committee for Constitutional Amendments on July 9.
Pakistan's security establishment is in a bind over evidence suggesting the Lashkar-e-Tayiba was behind the Mumbai attacks and the assault on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore as it had assured Western powers after the 2001 strike on Indian Parliament that it would keep a lid on the banned group's activities.
"It is very dangerous in the 21st century to exclude people," said the Congress president.
India reacted strongly to Sri Lanka's allegations of the presence of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam camps in the country on Thursday, and 'categorically' denied the existence of such camps in Tamil Nadu. It has also asked Colombo to 'desist from reacting to speculative and uncorroborated reports.'
In his 40s and an active politician, veteran batsman Sanath Jayasuriya on Thursday returned to the Sri Lankan One-day and Twenty20 cricket side after more than a year for the series against England later this month.
Ranjith Madduma Bandara, a senior politician from Wickremesinghe's United National Party was sworn in on Thursday morning as the new minister in charge of the police.
Veteran Sri Lankan socialist leader D M Jayaratne, a close ally of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, was sworn-in on Wednesday as the country's 20th prime minister after the ruling party secured a near two-thirds majority.
An "offensive" article on Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa published on the Sri Lankan Defence Ministry website with an accompanying graphic image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked up a storm in India which acted with "alacrity" on Friday to force the island nation to tender an unqualified apology.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's ruling United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) on Thursday won two more seats in Kandy and Trincolamee districts, but still fell short of two-thirds majority it was seeking to carry out constitutional changes.
'We believe that one of the suicide bombers studied in the UK and maybe later on did his post-graduate in Australia, before coming back to settle in Sri Lanka'
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa today declared that the war against the LTTE was over as he reached out to the Tamil population, saying their protection was the responsibility of his government.
With the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam wiped out, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Tuesday offered equal rights for Tamils through a political solution, but stressed that it won't be 'imported'. He said the government does not accept the military solution as final and that his aim was to provide equal rights to all communities. Rajapaksa said it was necessary to give the Tamil people the freedoms that are the right of people in all other parts of the country.
Authorities also released photographs of six suspects, including three women, wanted for their involvement in the attacks and sought information regarding them from the public.
Sri Lankan opposition leaders on Wednesday handed over a letter to a delegation of Members of Parliament from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu that is in Colombo, complaining that they were not allowed by the government to visit the relief camps for nearly three lakh displaced Tamils.
Speaker Karu Jayasuriya questioned the president's decision to suspend parliament till November 16, saying it will have "serious and undesirable" consequences on the country.
For Navy veterans who watched the huge vessel being towed away by a tug boat, it was an emotional moment as they stood near the Gateway of India, waving at the once 'floating town', aboard which they spent the best years of their career.
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam President M Karunanidhi on Tuesday chose to keep the cards close to his chest on the issue of which political outfit his party would strike an alliance to fight next year's Lok Sabha polls.
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Rajya Sabha member Kanimozhi on Wednesday submitted her resignation from the Upper House to party chief and her father M Karunanidhi in line with the decision of an all-party meeting to put pressure on the Centre to call for a ceasefire in Sri Lanka.
The residents near the dump had been protesting for months, demanding that the garbage dump be relocated. The authorities, however, claim that they had given enough warning to the slum dwellers to relocate themselves.
The emergency order has barely affected daily life for the vast majority of Sri Lankans, who have seen two decades of violence.
Issues such as seat sharing and being part of the DMK led government were not a priority now and that the main goal was to ensure that DMK comes to power.
The Sri Lankan president has withheld the official gazette notification necessary to formalise the decision to impose emergency.
The Sri Lankan president had dissolved the parliament on Saturday and ordered fresh polls on April 2
When over a hundred fishermen from Tamil Nadu were arrested by the Sri Lankan navy and their boats seized last month, fishermen in coastal Tamil Nadu went on strike. Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar visits the coastal towns of Nagapattinam and Rameswaram to discover that the fishermen do not have many choices.
The country's Sports Ministry worked closely with the International Cricket Council's (ICC) ACU during the process of drafting the bill.
The rotation policy followed by the BCCI and the travel route for the visiting team forced the BCCI to schedule the first match of the tour in Delhi
