A Shepherd unto God’s heart
On March 27, (Wednesday) in the Holy Week of 1983, the Vatican Radio announced the appointment of Very Rev Fr Vianney Fernando, Vicar General of the Diocese of Kandy as the Sixth Bishop of Kandy, by His Holiness Pope (St) John Paul II. With his Episcopal Ordination on May 21, 1983, Bishop Vianney took over [...]
WNPS dives into Sri Lanka’s shipwrecks
Turning the spotlight on the country’s archaeological heritage, biodiversity hotspots and magnets for recreational divers, this month’s Wildlife and Nature Protection Society (WNPS) lecture will be on ‘Shipwrecks in Sri Lanka’. It will be presented on January 20 at 6 pm at the Jasmine Hall of the BMICH. The speakers are: Arjan Rajasuriya, Coral ecologist, [...]
Lions Dialysis Centre opens at Mulleriyawa
A state-of-the-art kidney dialysis centre was declared open on Friday, January 14, at the Colombo East Base Hospital, Mulleriyawa, in the presence of District Governor 2019-2020 Lion Mahinda Perera, Lion Mahendra Amarasooriya International President 2007-2008, District Governor 2021-2022 Lion Amal Nishantha Pussllage, Dr Priyantha Karunaratne, Director, Colombo East Base Hospital, Ministry of health Officials, Lions [...]
Failure in security intelligence and preventive action
Failure in security intelligence is a common feature today, as has been seen in the 9/11 attacks, the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill assault in the United States, and the 2019 Easter Sunday bomb attacks in Sri Lanka (SL). In all these incidents, the issue was simply failure in security intelligence, more specifically in the [...]
Sri Lankan political rugby: Not moving forwards while passing the ball backwards
Contrary to the popular thinking that Lanka’s politicians have been and are playing ‘Pandu’ (cricket), they instead have been playing a kind of rugby– Not moving forward but passing the ball backward. Consider the political scene last week: Gamanpila gets the ball but he is not running with it; he passes it backwards to Lokuge; [...]
Nuclear powers pledge to avoid wars—even as they continue to upgrade their arsenals
NEW YORK (In-Depth News) — When the world’s five major nuclear powers—the US, UK, China, France and Russia—pledged to prevent nuclear wars and abandon the pursuit of more weapons, their January 3 joint statement explicitly left out several of the demands from anti-nuclear activists, including an end to the upgrading and enhancing of existing arsenals. [...]
Elephant barrier trenching fails due to faulty structural design
On Dec 12, 2021, this paper carried an article titled ‘Trenches against wild elephants – tried and failed – say experts’. In that article, the trenching system to mitigate elephant intrusion into areas of human habitation has been projected as a failure by the recently appointed Expert Panel who conducted a pilot project to assess [...]
Whatever happened to soft power?
CAMBRIDGE – As 2021 drew to a close, Russia had massed troops near its border with Ukraine; China had flown military jets near Taiwan; North Korea was still pursuing its nuclear-weapons programme; and Taliban fighters were patrolling the streets of Kabul. Seeing all this, friends asked me: “Whatever happened to soft power?” One answer is [...]