KANDY, Sri Lanka — A senior Buddhist leader in Sri Lanka on Wednesday welcomed a United States decision to lower tariffs on Sri Lankan goods, telling the new American ambassador that the country had received favorable treatment at a time when Washington has raised tariffs on many of its trading partners. The Most Venerable Thibbatuwawe Sri Siddhartha Sumangala Thera, the Mahanayake, or chief prelate, of the Malwathu Chapter, one of the most influential Buddhist orders in the country, spoke duri

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka- A magistrate in northern Sri Lanka on Tuesday gave the police more time to investigate an alleged mass grave on Mandaitivu, an island off the Jaffna Peninsula where dozens of young Tamil men disappeared after being detained by the army in 1990. The case has been before the courts for a year without an excavation. Magistrate Aneeba Rajeev of the Kayts Magistrate’s Court adjourned the case until Nov. 10 after officers from the Jaffna District Crime Prevention Police said they n

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka: The office of Northern Province Governor Nagalingam Vethanayahan has acknowledged that the building it occupies does not have a Certificate of Conformity. The governor has repeatedly directed local authorities to act against businesses that operate without one. The admission came in a reply to a request under the Right to Information Act filed on Aug. 20 by Kumaravadivel Guruparan, a Jaffna attorney and former head of the law department at the University of Jaffna. He asked w