We thank Minister Malik Samarawickrama for confirming our story. He should have announced it long before the Sunday Times broke the story. We stand-by every word in our story.

Investigations are due to commence next week at the request of President Maithripala Sirisena to the Attorney General on an international media investigation published last week tying him to possible corruption in the 2009 award of a dam project to an Australian company–when he was Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Services Development. The Sunday Times learns that the story was based on leaked emails from the firm.

One would have thought it was only the rich Arab sheikhs who distributed hundred dollar bills to the needy when in Sri Lanka. Much the same way political campaigners handed down handbills.

The wife of a colonel in the Army, presently attached to Nelum Pokuna theatre in Colombo, has been shot at at their home at Athurugiriya.

Sri Lanka Telecom’s major shareholder Global Telecommunications Holdings (GTH), a sister company of Maxis, Malaysia, will intervene into the company management by appointing Chief officer or a chief technical officer second in command to the current CEO Dileepa Wijesundera to tackle weak management and technical issues as well trade union actions of SLT engineers, an official closely connected to Maxis said.

Taranjit Singh Sandhu will be the next Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka succeeding Y.K.Sinha who has completed his term. An old Sri Lanka hand, Sandhu was Political Counselor in the Indian High Commission in Colombo between 2000 and 2004, which covered the 2002-2004 Norway-brokered peace process in Sri Lanka.