The trouble started this Tuesday with the UNP's Working Committee meeting. The items on top of the agenda went off smoothly with Sarathchandra Rajakaruna, Sarath Ranawake and Lakshman Kiriella being inducted into the party's highest policy making body.

Thaaththa," Bindu Udagedera asked, "what is all this talk about a historic agreement?" Bindu Udagedera asked.

As Eelam War IV rages, the 1687-day-old ceasefire has become the biggest casualty. Whether it would succumb to more severe strains in the coming days and weeks, despite rising hopes in the public mind about immediate peace talks, is now the critical question.

President Rajapaksa’s address to our heads of diplomatic missions might have had something of the resonance of Ranasinghe Premadasa but not his panache nor his venom.

Is North Korean leader Kim Jong Il bluffing? In recent years, he has boasted of his country achieving nuclear capability.

Three recent developments have generated optimism in the country's economic outlook. These are the decline in the international oil price, the apparent success of the government on the war front and the move of the two main political parties to arrive at a consensus on national issues.

Norway bashing seems to be the favourite past time of JVP politicians and they made plenty of it on the subject both in and outside Parliament last week while TNA parliamentarians continued with their somewhat silent “satyagraha” but the government though did not appear to be listening to either side.

During the wave of state terror in response to attempts to overthrow the State by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna in the eighties (accompanied as it was by an increasingly grim Northern conflict), government resistance to international scrutiny was at its height.