Jan 27 (Xinhua) Two charity foundations, the China Charity Foundation (CCF) and World Vision, gave 1.2 million yuan (approximately 144,578 US dollars) to tsunami-hit areas in Sri Lanka, Thursday. The donation was conveyed to a representative of Sri Lanka's embassy in Beijing. more..

Jan 27 (AR) I keep thinking of the stories that people told me in Sri Lanka. I was walking through a leveled town - the wave nearly flattened it and had turned it into something resembling a city dump - and a woman in a clean, pressed white dress approached me. more..

Jan 27 (Reuters) A Sri Lankan tsunami survivor is suing the island's government, police and railways in the Supreme Court for failing to warn him about the disaster and for the death of his wife and mother-in-law, his lawyer said on Thursday. more..

Jan 27 (AP) Sri Lanka's government and the Tamil Tiger rebels will hold their first direct meeting on how to use foreign aid to rebuild tsunami-damaged areas under guerrilla control, officials said Thursday. A rebel delegation was to travel to the Sri Lankan capital Friday for the meeting, officials said on condition of anonymity. more..

Jan 27 (AP) Indonesia lacks tsunami-detecting tide gauges, and one of Sri Lanka's two earthquake monitoring stations is hobbled by software troubles. Thailand needs to upgrade communications to warn tourists of danger. Government ministers from tsunami-ravaged Asian nations are meeting on the badly damaged resort island of Phuket on Friday and Saturday, more..

Jan 27 (CI) Sri Lanka Cricket has opened the bidding for team sponsorship rights for a three-year period starting on April 2005. The current team sponsor's deal, won by Dilmah Tea in 2002, expires at the end of March and the board are hoping for a record deal. more..

Jan 27 (DN) The entire nation, determined to rise from the ashes of the country's worst ever disaster marked the first one month since the tsunami disaster observing one minutes' silence as a mark of respect to more than 30,000 people killed in the massive tidal waves, as the clock struck 9.36 yesterday morning. more..

Jan 27 (CNA) 700,000 people in Sri Lanka are still living in welfare centres, a month after their homes were swept away by the tsunami. While the men have kept busy looking for work - the women are finding it hard to adjust. In a welfare centre in Batticaloa town,some 120 families, displaced by the tsunami, are housed. more..

Jan 27 (GI) Sri Lankan railways empolyees repair the track at Seenigama village, some 90 km south of Colombo, 26 January 2005. more..

Jan 27 (SD) Geologists in Sri Lanka are dismissing claims from other scientists and members of the public that they could have warned the country of last month's tsunami — an action that would have saved thousands of lives. more..

Jan 27 (TN) "The government’s treasury is brimming with Tsunami aid money. Here only our eyes brim with tears. The government has not given us anything in aid. We are living mostly on handouts by NGOs and others who come to see the plight of this place", M.L.M Haniffa, a farmer in Ullai, considered one of the ten best surfing spots in the world, more..

Jan 27 (TN) PAFFREL, a non-governmental organization specialised in monitoring elections is to deploy five thousand volunteers to monitor the distribution of relief supply and foreign aid to Tsunami affected districts in the island. The monitoring will commence on February 1, said PAFFREL Chairman Mr.Kingsely Rodrigo more..

Jan 27 (CI) Sri Lanka Cricket has announced four 15-man squads for the forthcoming Provincial Tournament, which will played in February and will be crucial to the selection of the senior team tour to New Zealand and the A team, which is due to start an intensive schedule from March. more..

Jan 28 (TN) The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) has established Disaster Relief Monitoring Unit (DRMU)) to ensure human rights protection during the post-tsunami reconstruction phase with Mr.Lionel Fernando as its chairman, civil rights sources said. more..

Jan 28 (MA) Yesterday marked 1 month since the tragic Tsunami tidal wave hit the east coast of Sri Lanka. The Medair team in Akkaraipattu, joined local villagers in a procession of remembrance for the dead. It was a day of mourning, shops were closed and the streets were quiet, as families grieved the loss of loved ones. more..

Jan 28 (CSM) Before the tsunami, Sri Lanka was not easy to enter - at least not for a foreign correspondent. You visited the embassy, met a diplomat, shared a cup of milk tea, then got your visa a week later. Or longer. After the tsunami, I got there in a day. more..

Jan 28 (Salon) It's 6 a.m. on Jan. 24. The streets are pitch black. Photographer Dwayne Newton and I, in the care of a remarkably fluent and urbane driver named Dilan ("Like Bob, or Matt") -- hit the road early, hoping to avoid Colombo's hellish traffic. We're heading 75 miles east to Sri Lanka's 16th century capital, a beautiful hill town called Kandy. more..

Jan 28 (BBC) Morning prayers in the refugee camp more..

Jan 28 (BBC) Two rafts decorated with Buddhist flags had drifted to the beaches of LTTE administered Vakarai and Government administered Mankeni in the Batticaloa district. The unmanned rafts were made from bamboo and corrugated metal sheets. more..

Jan 28 (AT) The issue of spending the tsunami relief funds has recently become the focus of the attention of the international community. They want to know whether the money given for relief and rehabilitation is spent accordingly. more..

Jan 28 (AT) Sri Lanka’s Ministry Finance is expected to come up with new sets of guidelines regarding the diversion of resources to projects already identified in a systematic manner. All donors and NGOs would be directed to follow the proposed guidelines in the future. more..

Jan 28 (AT) If the law is an ass, worse are lawyers behaving like asses. That’s exactly what’s happening in Sri Lanka, if you were to hear Desmond Fernando, a Former President of the International Bar Association (IBA), and a former President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka. more..

Jan 28 (Hindu) The Sri Lankan President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, today met a group of Indian Naval and Army personnel, engaged in relief operations along the tsunami-devastated coastline of the island-nation. more..

Jan 28 (JI) For the Rev. Edward Tissera, assistant pastor at St. Martha Roman Catholic Church, a recent three-week trip to his homeland of Sri Lanka was understandably painful. But he returned to the United States last week buoyed by the many small miracles he witnessed there, more..

Jan 28 (CO) SriLankan Airlines, South Asia's leading airline, announced that its traffic on Indian flights has jumped by 30 per cent during the first nine months of the FY 2004-05 over the same period the previous year. more..

Jan 28 (HN) Tsunami highlights tourism industry's biggest handicaps; its vulnerability to changes in the immediate environment. It is among the first to get affected but among the last to recuperate. Sri Lanka prepares itself for the troubled times, yet again. more..

Jan 28 (SAMN) The Colombo High Court Thursday remanded the wife of Christian and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Milroy Fernando and two other suspects in connection with the alleged abduction and killing of a woman who was suspected to be the mistress of the minister and her domestic aide. more..

Jan 28 (SAMN) In a bid to resolve the existing shortage of Government hospital nurses, the Healthcare and Nutrition Ministry has decided on a massive recruitment drive which seeks to recruit 5,000 nurses each year for the next three years. more..

Jan 28 (SAMN) The All Ceylon Railway Employees’ Union has accused the government of conspiring to hand over the southern railway track restoration project to an Indian company. The JVP union’s General Secretary, Sumathipala Manavadu said there was a clandestine bid to this effect more..

Jan 28 (SAMN) A JVP minister Thursday vowed to rise against any move to postpone elections under the cover of the tsunami catastrophe. Referring to a recent statement made by President Chandrika Kumaratunga in Hambantota, Small and Rural Industries Minister K.D.Lal Kantha said the President had apparently not consulted other parties of the Alliance before making that statement. more..

Jan 28 (VIP) Woman salvaging her few possessions from her destroyed home after a tsunami hit the city of Batticaloa located in eastern Sri Lanka. more..

Jan 28 (Xinhua) Sri Lanka on Thursday decided to make public details of the funds it has received from various donors and their accountability, according to a press release from the President's Office. more..

Jan 28 (AFP) In the month since the tsunami struck Sri Lanka, Frenchmen Pierre Layac and Jacques Quentin have bought six fishing boats for use by devastated locals, have been operating a pre-school, are building another and are sponsoring a relief medical team. more..

Jan 28 (TES) Just over a month ago, 450 children swarmed the corridors of the small Roman Catholic primary school in the heart of Mullaitivu, on Sri Lanka’s north-east coast. Today, the children are gone, the life ripped out of the once vibrant school and Mullaitivu reduced to a ghost town. more..

Jan 28 (ANN) The tsunami that wrecked coastal Sri Lanka was sudden, unforeseen and episodic. The source of the tsunami, tectonic plate displacement at the plate juncture may not happen again for a hundred or more years. more..

Jan 28 (RW) A minute's silence was observed nationwide this morning to commemorate the devastation the country faced exactly a month ago. In memory of those who did not survive the tsunami, candles were lit and trees planted. At around 9.35am, broadcast stations, both state-owned and private, went off the air. more..

Jan 28 (TN) "International community has understood the need for an administrative authority to channel foreign aid to the Tsunami devastated northeast province. Foreign funds are likely to be available for the reconstruction of northeast through an authority or for the implementation of identified specific projects. more..

Jan 28 (TN) "The distribution of relief to Vanni region by the Sri Lanka government is not satisfactory and urgent needs of the Tsunami affected people are not being met adequately. No responsible government official has visited Jaffna, Vanni and other affected districts in the NorthEast after Tsunami disaster to see the ground situation there," more..

Jan 28 (TN) More than four thousand people marched in Mannar town Friday in protest against the Sri Lankan government for denying equitable distribution of Tsunami aid to Northeast. The march and brief rally were led by Vanni district MPs and civil society groups in Mannar. more..

Jan 28 (TN) "This is not the time to engage in political haggling and our National Leader has prioritised rehabilitation and reconstruction of the devastated Tamil Homeland and thereby give you all a better life, creating the right conditions that would redeem you from the state of dependency attached to a displaced life" more..

Jan 28 (TN) A branch of the Kantharoopan children's home was opened by LTTE in Palukamam, 20 km south-west of Batticaloa on Wednesday. Ten children, 8 girls and 2 boys, aged 7 to 16 are the first to be cared for in the new home, LTTE sources said. more..

Jan 28 (TN) "The Sinhala government is bent on diverting foreign aid, meant for the tsunami affected people to strengthen its military apparatus and also to stabilize its political power. Our leadership is taking all possible efforts at international level and with the Government of Sri Lanka to take steps to rehabilitate and to improve the living standard of our people," more..

Jan 28 (VIP) Tsunami refugees Kilinochchi junior Mahavidyalaya school refugee camp Many students of the high school has volunteered to help the refugees, here they are preparing the dinner. more..

Jan 28 (SLBC) President's Counsel Wijeyadasa Rajapakse has appealed to President Kumaratunga to appoint a Commission of Inquiry consisting of competent members to probe if there were any lapses or omissions on the part of the relevant authorities for failing to communicate to the people of coastal Sri Lanka an advance warning of the tsunami disaster. more..

Jan 28 (LT) The trial regarding the murder of Richard de Zoysa, reputed journalist is to be taken up today (28th). This will be argued in Supreme Court. Richard de Zoysa was murdered in 1989 during the UNP regime. The UNP including Ranil Wickremasinsghe was accused of Richard de Zoysa’s murder.

Jan 28 (LT) As the number of houses that has to be built this year is equivalent to the number that is normally built in 18 years, the Government of Sri Lanka has come across a crisis of finding raw material and labour say reports. more..

Jan 28 (LT) UNP deputy leader Karu Jayasuriya has officially informed the President that the UNP was against the law that prohibits putting up any building within 100 m of the sea coast. Mr. Jayasuriya stated this at the discussion of the National High Level Committee for Disaster Management held in President’s House this morning. more..

Jan 28 (LT) President Chandrika Kumaratunga Said that a large number of foreign funded NGO’s operating in Sri Lanka are corrupt and detrimental to the country and therefore she has had to take certain measures to control them. She said so at a high-level discussion held yesterday on national Disaster Management. more..

Jan 28 (TC) Tuesday afternoon, after the huge rally with the kids, we went down to the shore. It was depressing! There was an entire neighborhood (of more than 50 houses) wiped out! All that was left was the foundation and a few random walls. One of the pictures is of a house right on the shore -- only, before the tsunami it wasn't a waterfront house. more..

Jan 28 (LBO) Plans to expand tsunami damaged roads in the south and east are still on the drawing board, with a final report expected in early February. Officials say a decision to expand or return the roads to its previous state depended heavily on funding and land acquisitions. more..