Detectives from Britain’s Scotland Yard may not arrive in Sri Lanka after all to assist in investigations into the murder of Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian Nadarajah Raviraj. The reason – a dispute over a Scotland Yard demand that the suspects will not be handed down the death sentence upon conviction. The Yard wants such a provision incorporated in a Memorandum of Understanding.

The Sri Lankan delegates made themselves absent when the UN General Assembly took up for voting a resolution calling for an end to Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip last week. The Foreign Ministry in Colombo confirmed that the delegates were absent, but declined to give reasons.

A Cabinet Minister and his wife recently engaged in a hand-to-hand fight at the Mount Lavinia Hotel. Eyewitnesses said the wife hit her husband after exchanging abuses. Later, she had walked out of the hotel. The husband who followed had found that his wife had parked her car blocking the road.

The President and all parliamentarians will get a thumping double pay hike with arrears while in the future their pay will be adjusted on par with the revisions of the salary structure in the judicial service, according to two resolutions rushed through parliament this week.