COLOMBO — More than a thousand Sri Lankan soldiers and police officers are preparing to deploy to Haiti in August, the largest single contingent the country has ever sent abroad — and a return, after more than a decade, to the same Caribbean nation where its peacekeepers were once documented running a child sex ring that went unpunished. The deployment, announced by the government, comprises 900 army personnel drawn from several regiments, 189 officers of the Police Special Task Force, and, fo

By M.R. Narayan Swamy Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was meeting exporters at Temple Trees when his phone rang. The businessmen noticed the President listening attentively to the person on the other end. His demeanour changed as the call ended, but he continued with the meeting. None of those discussing the problems faced by exporters with the President knew that Lasantha Wickrematunge, one of Sri Lanka's most independent and fearless journalists, had been gunned down just minutes earl

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka Cricket will build a cricket ground in this northern city, but has abandoned the international stadium it once promised, saying it cannot afford a venue of international standard. The retreat scales back what had been billed as a landmark for the country’s war-scarred north, where cricket commands the same devotion as in the rest of the island but where world-class facilities have never existed. The governing body has concluded that the project it originally appro

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — The governor of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province has removed two elected local officials from office by executive order, an extraordinary use of administrative power that has reignited a constitutional dispute over how far an unelected official may go in unseating elected representatives in the country’s Tamil-majority north. In a notification published in the government’s official Gazette, Governor Nagalingam Vethanayahan declared that Sundaralingam Kandeepan, elected mayor of