Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP) Priyantha Weerasuriya highlighted the success of the "Clean Sri Lanka" program, which, in collaboration with police traffic operations, has reduced daily road fatalities.&nbsp; He noted the death toll has dropped from an average of 9 per day to as low as 2, with some days seeing no fatalities.&nbsp; Weerasuriya emphasised road discipline and revealed that between 10-15 people are permanently disabled daily due to accidents.&nbsp; A significant achievement was recorded on Christmas Day (December 25) with no road accidents reported.

Police operations reduced road fatalities, major progress under "Clean Sri Lanka" program

An agreement was signed yesterday (16) for the construction of 60 smart classrooms for estate schools. The agreement was signed between Prabath Chandrakeerthi, Secretary of the Ministry of Irrigation and Rural Infrastructure, and High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka. This initiative aims to bridge the digital divide in estate communities in Sri Lanka and focuses on building smart classrooms for estate schools in the districts of Nuwara Eliya, Nuwara, and Badulla. One of the key objectives is to enhance the quality of education in estate schools.&nbsp; As part of this effort, the Indian Government has provided a grant of Rs. 508 million, and the Sri Lankan Government has allocated Rs. 115 million for the construction of these smart classrooms.

Agreement signed for 60 smart classrooms in estate schools

The U.S. Embassy, in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and the Central Cultural Fund, has launched a Rs. 32 million conservation project to preserve the 12th-century Thuparama Image House in Polonnaruwa, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site. Funded by the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation&nbsp;(AFCP), the initiative aims to prevent further damage to the historic site, known for its vaulted brick roof and intricate stucco designs. The launch event featured U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka Julie Chung and Minister of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs Hiniduma Sunil Senevi, underscoring the importance of protecting Sri Lanka’s cultural heritage for future generations.

U.S. Embassy launches preservation project for Thuparama image house

The Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) announced a 20% average reduction in electricity tariffs, effective from midnight today (17).&nbsp; The revised rates will apply for the next six months, according to PUCSL’s Director of Communications, Jayanath Herath.

PUCSL announces 20% electricity tariff reduction

Sri Lanka has been ranked 9th on BBC Travel's list of the "25 Best Places to Travel in 2025." Journalist Claire Turrell highlighted the country's stunning tea plantations, ancient temples, wild elephants, and surf spots.&nbsp; Despite recent challenges, Sri Lanka is focusing on recovery through tourism, with notable developments including Kandy's first seven-star hotel, a $1 billion megaresort in Colombo, and the launch of the new airline Air Ceilão. Tourists can explore the new 300 km Pekoe Trail, enjoy scenic train rides, and even self-drive tuk-tuks across the island, supporting local communities.&nbsp; Sri Lanka’s innovative and sustainable travel initiatives make it a must-visit destination for 2025. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250115-the-25-best-places-to-travel-in-2025

Sri Lanka ranked among BBC top 25 travel destinations for 2025

A Pakistani court sentenced&nbsp;former Prime Minister Imran Khan&nbsp;to 14 years imprisonment on Friday in a land corruption case, local broadcaster ARY News reported. The verdict in the case, the largest in terms of financial wrongdoing faced by Khan, was delivered by an anti-graft court in a prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where Khan has been jailed since August 2023. The former cricket star, 72, had been&nbsp;indicted&nbsp;on charges that he and his wife were gifted land by a real estate developer during his premiership from 2018 to 2022 in exchange for illegal favours. Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, had pleaded not guilty. The announcement of the verdict was delayed three times, most recently on Monday, amid&nbsp;talks&nbsp;between the government and Khan's party. Bushra Bibi, who is in her late 40s and was out on bail, was taken into custody after she was also convicted in the case, Geo News reported. "Whilst we wait for detailed decision, it's important to note that, the Al Qadir Trust case against Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi lacks any solid foundation and is bound to collapse," Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party's foreign media wing said in a statement. The verdict is the biggest setback for Khan and his party since a surprisingly good showing in the 2024 general election when its candidates - who were forced to contest as independents - won the most seats, but fell short of the majority needed to form a government. Jailed since August 2023, Khan has been facing dozens of cases ranging from charges of graft and misuse of power, to inciting violence against the state after being removed from office in a parliamentary vote of confidence in April 2022. He has either been acquitted or his sentences suspended in most cases, except for one on charges of inciting supporters to rampage through military facilities to protest against his arrest on&nbsp;May 9, 2023. His supporters have led several&nbsp;violent&nbsp;protest rallies since the May 9 incidents. He has been tried inside a jail on security grounds. Source: Reuters

Pakistan court sentences ex-PM Imran Khan to 14 years in land graft case, ARY News reports 

Every week, Rajesh PN Rao, a computer scientist, gets emails from people claiming they've cracked an ancient script that has stumped scholars for generations. These self-proclaimed codebreakers - ranging from engineers and IT workers to retirees and tax officers - are mostly from India or of Indian origin living abroad. All of them are convinced they've deciphered the script of the Indus Valley Civilisation, a blend of signs and symbols. "They claim they've solved it and that the 'case is closed'," says Mr Rao, Hwang Endowed Professor at the University of Washington and author of peer-reviewed studies on the Indus script. Adding fuel to the race, MK Stalin, the chief minister of southern India's Tamil Nadu state, recently upped the stakes, announcing a $1m prize for anyone who can crack the code. The Indus, or Harappan, civilisation - one of the world's earliest urban societies - emerged 5,300 years ago in present-day northwest India and Pakistan. Its austere farmers and traders, living in walled, baked-brick cities, thrived for centuries. Since its discovery a century ago, around 2,000 sites have been uncovered across the region. The reasons behind the society's sudden decline remain unclear, with no apparent evidence of war, famine or a natural disaster. But its greatest mystery is its undeciphered script, leaving its language, governance and beliefs shrouded in secrecy. For over a century, experts - linguists, scientists and archaeologists - have tried to crack the Indus script. Theories have linked it to early Brahmi scripts, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages, Sumerian, and even claimed it's just made up of political or religious symbols. Yet, its secrets remain locked away. "The Indus script is perhaps the most important system of writing that is undeciphered," says Asko Parpola, a leading Indologist. These days, the more popular spectacular theories equate the script with content from Hindu scriptures and attribute spiritual and magical meanings to the inscriptions. Most of these attempts ignore that the script, made up of signs and symbols, mostly appears on stone seals used for trade and commerce, making it unlikely they contain religious or mythological content, according to Mr Rao. There are many challenges to deciphering the Indus script. First, the relatively small number of scripts - about 4,000 of them, almost all on small objects such as seals, pottery and tablets. Then there's the brevity of each script - average length of about five signs or symbols - with no long texts on walls, tablets or upright stone slabs. Consider the commonly found square seals: lines of signs run along their top, with a central animal motif - often a unicorn - and an object beside it, whose meaning remains unknown. There's also no bilingual artefact like the Rosetta Stone, which helped scholars decode Egyptian hieroglyphs. Such artefacts contain text in two languages, offering a direct comparison between a known and unknown script. Recent advancements in deciphering the Indus script have used computer science to tackle this ancient enigma. Researchers have used machine learning techniques to analyse the script, trying to identify patterns and structures that could lead to its understanding. Nisha Yadav, a researcher at the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), is one of them. In collaboration with scientists like Mr Rao, her work has focused on applying statistical and computational methods to analyse the undeciphered script. Using a digitised data set of Indus signs from the script, they have found interesting patterns. A caveat: "We still don't know whether the signs are complete words, or part of words or part of sentences," says Ms Yadav. Ms Yadav and co-researchers found 67 signs that account for 80% of the writing on the script. A sign which looks like a jar with two handles turned out to be the most frequently used sign. Also, the scripts began with a large number of signs and ended with fewer of them. Some sign patterns appear more often than expected. Also, a machine-learning model of the script was created to restore the illegible and damaged texts, paving the way for further research. "Our understanding is that the script is structured and there is an underlying logic in the writing," says Ms Yadav. To be sure, several ancient scripts remain undeciphered, facing challenges similar to the Indus script. Mr Rao cites scripts like Proto-Elamite (Iran), Linear A (Crete), and Etruscan (Italy), whose underlying language is unknown. Others, like Rongorongo (Easter Island) and Zapotec (Mexico), have known languages, "but their symbols remain unclear". The Phaistos Disc from Crete - a mysterious, fired clay disc from the Minoan civilisation - "closely mirrors the Indus script's challenges - its language is unknown, and only one known example exists". Back in India, it is not entirely clear why Mr Stalin of Tamil Nadu announced a reward for deciphering the script. His announcement followed a new study linking Indus Valley signs to graffiti found in his state. K Rajan and R Sivananthan analysed over 14,000 graffiti-bearing pottery fragments from 140 excavated sites in Tamil Nadu, which included more than 2,000 signs. Many of these signs closely resemble those in the Indus script, with 60% of the signs matching, and over 90% of south Indian graffiti marks having "parallels" with those from the Indus civilisation, the researchers claim. This "suggests a kind of cultural contact" between the Indus Valley and south India, Mr Rajan and Mr Sivananthan say. Many believe Mr Stalin's move to announce an award positions him as a staunch champion of Tamil heritage and culture, countering Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules in Delhi. But researchers are confident that there will be no claimants for Mr Stalin's prize soon. Scholars have compiled complete, updated databases of all known inscribed artefacts - crucial for decipherment. "But what did the Indus people write? I wish we knew," says Ms Yadav. Source: BBC

A million-dollar challenge to decode the script of early Indians

Levels of the most significant planet-warming gas in our atmosphere rose more quickly than ever previously recorded last year, scientists say, leaving a key global climate target hanging by a thread. Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) are now more than 50% higher than before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels. Last year, fossil fuel emissions were at record highs, while the natural world struggled to absorb as much CO2 due to factors including wildfires and drought, so more accumulated in the atmosphere. The rapid increase in CO2 is "incompatible" with the international pledge to try to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the Met Office says. This was the ambitious goal agreed by nearly 200 countries at a landmark UN meeting in Paris in 2015, with the hope of avoiding some of the worst impacts of climate change. Last week it was confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record, and the first calendar year in which annual average temperatures were higher than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This did not break the Paris goal, which refers to a longer-term average over decades, but continued increases to atmospheric CO2 effectively consign the world to doing so. "Limiting global warming to 1.5C would require the CO2 rise to be slowing, but in reality the opposite is happening," says Richard Betts of the Met Office. The long-term CO2 increase is unquestionably due to human activities, mainly through burning coal, oil and gas, and cutting down forests. Records of the Earth's climate in the distant past from ice cores and marine sediments show that CO2 levels are currently at their highest in at least two million years, according to the UN. But the rise varies from year to year, thanks to differences in how the natural world absorbs carbon, as well as fluctuations in humanity's emissions. Last year, CO2 emissions from fossil fuels reached new highs, according to preliminary data from the Global Carbon Project team. There were also the effects of the natural El Niño phenomenon - where surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean become unusually warm, affecting weather patterns. The natural world has absorbed roughly half of humanity's CO2 emissions, for example through extra plant growth and more of the gas being dissolved in the ocean. But that extra blast of heat from El Niño against the background of climate change meant natural carbon sinks on land did not take up as much CO2 as usual last year. Rampant wildfires, including in regions not usually affected by El Niño, also released extra CO2. "Even without the boost from El Niño last year, the CO2 rise driven by fossil fuel burning and deforestation would now be outpacing the [UN climate body] IPCC's 1.5C scenarios," says Prof Betts. These factors meant that between 2023 and 2024 CO2 levels increased by nearly 3.6 parts per million (ppm) molecules of air to a new high of more than 424ppm. This is a record yearly increase since atmospheric measurements were first taken at the remote Mauna Loa research station in Hawaii in 1958. Perched high on the side of a volcano in the Pacific Ocean, the station's remote location away from major pollution sources makes it ideally suited to monitoring global CO2 levels. "These latest results further confirm that we are moving into uncharted territory faster than ever as the rise continues to accelerate," says Prof Ralph Keeling, who leads the measurement programme at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the US. The record increase adds to concerns that the natural world may become less able to absorb planet-warming gases in the long-term. The Arctic tundra is being transformed into an overall source of CO2, thanks to warming and frequent fires, according to the US science group NOAA. The ability of the Amazon rainforest to absorb CO2 is also being hit by drought, wildfires and deliberate deforestation. "It's an open question, but it's something we need to keep a close eye on and look at very carefully," Prof Betts tells the BBC. The Met Office predicts the increase in CO2 concentration in 2025 will be less extreme than 2024, but still significantly off-track to meet the 1.5C target. La Niña conditions – where surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean are cooler than normal - have replaced El Niño, which tends to allow the natural world to take up more CO2. "While there may be a temporary respite with slightly cooler temperatures, warming will resume because CO2 is still building up in the atmosphere," Prof Betts says. Source: BBC

Planet-warming gas levels rose more than ever in 2024, scientists say

MP Mano Ganesan, leader of the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA), met with United Kingdom’s (UK) High Commissioner Andrew Patrick to discuss the challenges faced by Malaiyaha Tamils in Sri Lanka.&nbsp; The meeting focused on land rights, integration, and the need for devolution of powers.&nbsp; Ganesan emphasised the ongoing struggles of the plantation community, highlighting the UK's role in addressing these issues for nation-building.&nbsp; Barath Arulsamy, Vice President of International Relations and Communications for the DPF-TPA, also attended the meeting.

Police operations reduced road fatalities, major progress un ...

Agreement signed for 60 smart classrooms in estate schools

Agreement signed for 60 smart ...

U.S. Embassy launches preservation project for Thuparama image house

U.S. Embassy launches preserva ...

PUCSL announces 20% electricity tariff reduction

PUCSL announces 20% electricit ...

Sri Lanka ranked among BBC top 25 travel destinations for 2025

Sri Lanka ranked among BBC top ...

Pakistan court sentences ex-PM Imran Khan to 14 years in land graft ca ...

Pakistan court sentences ex-PM ...

A million-dollar challenge to decode the script of early Indians

A million-dollar challenge to ...

Planet-warming gas levels rose more than ever in 2024, scientists say

Planet-warming gas levels rose ...

Mano Ganesan meets UK High Commissioner to discuss Malaiyaha tamil iss ...

Mano Ganesan meets UK High Com ...

Agreement signed for 60 smart classrooms in estate schools

Agreement signed for 60 smart ...

U.S. Embassy launches preservation project for Thuparama image house

U.S. Embassy launches preserva ...

PUCSL announces 20% electricity tariff reduction

PUCSL announces 20% electricit ...

Sri Lanka ranked among BBC top 25 travel destinations for 2025

Sri Lanka ranked among BBC top ...

Pakistan court sentences ex-PM Imran Khan to 14 years in land graft ca ...

Pakistan court sentences ex-PM ...

A million-dollar challenge to decode the script of early Indians

A million-dollar challenge to ...

Planet-warming gas levels rose more than ever in 2024, scientists say

Planet-warming gas levels rose ...

Mano Ganesan meets UK High Commissioner to discuss Malaiyaha tamil iss ...

Mano Ganesan meets UK High Com ...

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Agreement signed for 60 smart classrooms in estate schools

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U.S. Embassy launches preservation project for Thuparama image house

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Bringing the news paper to your fingertips

PUCSL announces 20% electricity tariff reduction

PUCSL announces 20% electricit ...

Sri Lanka ranked among BBC top 25 travel destinations for 2025

Sri Lanka ranked among BBC top ...

Pakistan court sentences ex-PM Imran Khan to 14 years in land graft ca ...

Pakistan court sentences ex-PM ...

A million-dollar challenge to decode the script of early Indians

A million-dollar challenge to ...