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JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Two Sri Lankan cabinet ministers invited journalists to a news conference in Jaffna on Wednesday, delivered lengthy remarks and then left after taking only a few questions, angering reporters who said some of them had traveled considerable distances expecting an opportunity to question the officials. Bimal Rathnayake, the minister of transport and highways, and Ramalingam Chandrasekar, the minister of fisheries, aquatic and ocean resources, held the briefing at the National

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Eric Meyer, a career diplomat who until recently helped shape American policy across South and Central Asia from Washington, arrived in Sri Lanka over the weekend to take up his post as ambassador, ending a seven-month stretch in which the American mission here was run by an acting chief. Mr. Meyer landed in Colombo on the evening of Aug. 22, the United States Embassy said Monday. His arrival follows confirmation by the Senate in May and a swearing-in ceremony this month in

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Displaced residents of Palaly in Sri Lanka’s northern Jaffna Peninsula protested for a 10th consecutive week on Sunday, demanding the return of ancestral and privately owned land that remains under the control of the security forces, as representatives of nearly all major Tamil political parties joined the demonstration. The weekly protest at Palaly Junction is part of a broader campaign for the release of civilian land in Valikamam North, where demonstrations have also been

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — The leader of an association representing families of people who disappeared during and after Sri Lanka’s civil war accused the government on Saturday of trying to steer relatives toward accepting death certificates and compensation instead of establishing what happened to their missing family members. Yogarasa Kanagaranjini, president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared in the North and East, said the government was using the Office on Missing Person