Army Troops, now on the outskirts of much-spoken Kokavil, to the south of Kilinochchi bordering the parallel A-9 Highway and old Murikandi-Kokavil Railway Station recall cherished memories of their fallen War Heroes in the 1990s with honour, admiration and valour and LTTE massacre on 'Yal Devi 'passenger train.

 Photos in this story taken on Monday (29) show vandalized ruins of the Murikandi-Kokavil railway station platform with all its roof-sheets, iron rail tracks, and almost everything, belonging to the railway station after those items were either damaged or removed and finally taken away by jungle- based Tiger terrorists, to be used for their criminal acts.

by: Don Asoka Wijewardena

By Shanika SRIYANANDA

Social Services Minister Douglas Devananda, commending on the government's decision to relocate UN agencies and other INGOs in Vavuniya, said that civilians who were forcibly kept in Mullaithivu and Kilinochchi would cross to government controlled areas soon breaking the orders of the LTTE.

by: DAYAN JAYATILLEKA

Watching the footage of the massive bomb explosion which killed 53 people at the Marriott in Islamabad, and sharing the concerns about the travails of our close friend Pakistan, pressured from without and threatened from within, I was reminded of how strong and "tough" the Sri Lankan state, polity and society are.As the 1980s turned into the ’90s, Sri Lanka had foreign peacekeepers on its soil, a separatist insurgency (LTTE), irredentist strivings (Perumal/NEPC), and a ferocious insurrection of the xenophobic ultra-left (JVP).Any one of these challenges could have wrecked a state and a polity, and yet we survived and prevailed, our democracy and market economy intact and sovereignty retrieved in the main, though we could not overcome the most serious of the separatist threats, the LTTE.

by Roland Buerk

Sri Lanka's powerful Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has said the government is on the verge of victory in the war against Tamil Tiger rebels. "In all fronts we are very superior, on the ground, the sea and air," said Mr Rajapaksa in an interview with the BBC. "Our numbers are very much greater than theirs, our firepower is much greater.

We are very confident we can win and we want to finish this very soon." About 70,000 people have been killed in one of South Asia's longest wars.

After a ceasefire fighting resumed in earnest in mid-2006 and Sri Lanka's military ejected the Tigers from the East. Attention then turned to territory controlled in the north by the rebels, who want a separate state for the ethnic Tamil minority.

UN: The Presidents of Sri Lanka and Iran agreed on the need for agricultural development especially in the developing countries in the context of assuring global food security. This understanding was expressed when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met with President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the United Nations on Thursday.

The bilateral meeting of the two leaders took place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly sessions that were addressed by both leaders. The Iranian President expressed his gratitude for the very warm reception extended to him on his delegation on their recent visit to Sri Lanka, while the Sri Lankan President thanked Iran for the assistance given for important development projets, and measures that helped Sri Lanka avoid the harsh impact of the global fuel crisis.

by: Dr. Tilak S. Fernando

REMEMBERED: On September 26 1959, Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was assassinated in cold blood, by a person clad in yellow robes. Bandaranaike had an enlightened philosophy, the full realisation of which suffered certain setbacks.

SWRD Bandaranaike was educated at Oxford, UK, according to his father's wish. Solomon Dias Bandaranaike was determined that his son graduated from one of the best seats of learning in the world and the result was, he was 'packed up' into a ship to England to study at the Oxford University.

As an undergraduate at Oxford University in the UK, he viewed the Asians at the English universities as a long-dragged and an urgent problem. In one of his writings to an Oxford magazine, for which he became famous, he considered it as a problem with many aspects. While Royal Commission dealt with this problem at the time and university professors, Anglo-Indians wrote articles about it in newspapers, many others with or without knowledge of the subject gave their opinion on the matter.