Shani Abeysekara case and AG’s conflict of interest
The severe castigation of the police and the lower courts by the Court of Appeal (CA) calls for investigations into the undue incarceration of the then CID Shani Abeysekara. He had languished in remand custody for 10 months during which he contracted Covid-19, suffered a heart attack and was forced to undergo surgery, the CA [...]
Search for ‘the Truth’ amidst debris of fake news and sacred truths
Quite apart from humanity’s futile search for the ‘Eternal Truth’ since time immemorial, today, in the age of electronic information, we are baffled to find simple truths even on mundane political matters. During the past two weeks, the Sri Lankan polity was embroiled in the search for the truth about who was responsible for the [...]
Vaccines, ‘Delta strain’ bring new pandemic challenge
LONDON (Reuters) – In the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, engineers are building a 5,000-person quarantine facility, central to Beijing’s strategy for reopening itself to the outside world while COVID-19 continues. Having largely stamped out its original outbreak last year, China now claims to be on the edge of shutting down a much smaller outbreak [...]
India looks west
NEW DELHI – Recent conciliatory moves by India’s nationalist government on its western flank have rightly aroused global interest. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s calculus appears relatively simple. Faced with continued Chinese aggression on India’s northern frontier and a likely Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, improving relations on the country’s western flank, with Pakistan, seems prudent. [...]