When you create a free website on WordPress.com, your site’s default address will look something like example.wordpress.com. When you’re ready to build your professional presence, buying a custom domain — such as yourgroovydomain.com — is a great next step to personalizing your site and carving out a space for your business online. You can register a domain in a few clicks, but ...
Photograph courtesy The Agenda My name is Fathima Sahar, a first year student at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Moratuwa. I am one of three students who are affected by the ban on the niqab by the University. I thought of writing this because our side of story has been literally ‘veiled’ away from the public. ...
[Editors note: Also read I’m not mad to tie myself to a tree by the author, which appeared in the Ceylon Today newspaper.] Giving up a pensionable government job as a Samurdhi animator, Mohammed Irshad fled Sri Lanka began work as a bakery employee in Saudi Arabia. This is his story. Mohammed Irshad’s name may be unfamiliar, but many ...
Image courtesy AP, via Gulf News Potemkin City, with a difference: A Guide to Colombo for CHOGM 2013 Your Excellency, Distinguished Delegate, Dear Visitor, Ayubowan! Vanakkam! Welcome to Colombo! You may have heard of how General Potemkin primed Crimea for the pleasure of Catherine the Great and her foreign ambassadors on their southern trip in 1787. Likewise, our own ...
All photos by the author. Two weeks have passed since violence broke out in Aluthgama and Beruwala on the 15th June- a day that will go down in the history books of Sri Lanka as nothing short of a dark, dark day. These are a few photos I managed to take while carefully stepping through the rubble of the ...
We read hundreds of blogs and websites every day, from up-and-coming voices and established pros alike. We love visiting those sites on WordPress.com, but it’s just as rewarding to see other platforms embrace the work of writers, journalists, and artists who regularly publish here, introducing it to new audiences. Here’s a selection of WordPress.com bloggers who recently made a splash. A mathematician at work Terry Tao ...
I limped out of the meeting and said, “excuse me”, and took the elevator down 67 stories, went to Grand Central, limped home, and never…Continue reading on Medium »
Sri Lankan website have been hit by yet another hacker spree, this time apparently targeting central government websites. Approximately 14 hours ago, the twitter account @OpSriLanka sent out a single tweet: “Extremist ‘Bodu Bala Sena’ bodubalasena.org has been TangoDown #OpSriLanka #BBS @HackerBrigade #CrimesAgainstHumanity” From there, the hackers apparently moved onto take down the website of the Sri Lanka High Commission and the ...
Photo by Lakruwan Wanniarachchi, AFP/Getty Images via FT Photo Diary I imagine that beneath the cordial smiles and exchange of pleasantries there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth taking place at Temple Trees these days. The façade that was CHOGM 2013 seems to have crumbled, at least in the eyes of the world, although certainly not in most parts ...
Photo by Dinouk Colombage, via Al Jazeera The horrible killings and destruction in Aluthgama on Sunday was blacked out by almost all mainstream media in Sri Lanka at the height of the violence and the morning after. However, the violence was in detail and close to real time covered extensively over social media, leading to a documentation many times greater and more detailed than ...
Image courtesy The Social Architects This report, TSA’s fourth, outlines the findings of the organization’s September 2013 field mission on coercive contraception clinics in Kilinochchi District. In early September of this year, activists in Kilinochchi discovered that public health workers had administered the sub-dermal contraceptive implant, Jadelle, to women from Veravil, Keranchi, and Valaipaddu during a nutrition clinic. After ...
The Presidential poll of 8 January 2015 inspired the largest number of voters in Sri Lanka’s history to turn out to elect a new president. The #IVotedSL campaign, which went viral in the lead up to and on the day of the election, was an unprecedented effort over social media to enhance voter turnout. Thousands of Sri Lankans participated. This new campaign ...
Power lines in Nepal. Credit: David Waldorf This blog is part of the series #OneSouthAsia exploring how South Asia can become a more integrated, thus more economically dynamic region. The blog series is a lead up to the South Asia Economic Conclave, an event dedicated to deepening existing economic links through policy and investments in regional businesses. Development practitioners often paint two faces of South Asia. ...
What a strange budget. Broadly they are taxing the rich and giving stuff away to the poor. There are a lot of one-time taxes (wut?) on big companies, taxes on people with big houses, vehicle importers, etc. At the same time, prices of a lot of consumer goods are reduced, salaries are increased for government workers, hand tractors will be ...
Photo by AFP/LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI via Pakistan Today On the 19th of July 2014, my cook hands me a police form to fill. It is one of those usual forms that we were inundated with during the war. The form asks for almost the same information as the election registration forms, with the one exception of asking for details of ...
Kathmandu after the first earthquake It has been a month since a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit central Nepal on April 25. What happened next? Having experienced a real threat of death, many survivors manifested avoidance (“I don’t want to talk about it!”), hyper-vigilance (“What’s that noise? Is the ground moving?”), intrusive thoughts (“What if the next big one may ...
I’m voting for Maithri this Thursday. For me it’s pretty simple. I’d like to be ruled by a government, not a family. I’m not related to Rajapaksas so I’d rather take my chance with laws. Why Maithripala This is what Maithiripala is promising: Mahinda Rajapaksa was a ‘pleasant man’ then. I too joined him in the Pada Yatras . This is why ...
Maithripala Sirisena has appointed his new Cabinet of Ministers, nine State Ministers and eight Deputy Ministers. Who are they and what does it all mean? Terms Ministers In Sri Lanka, Ministers are members of Parliament with a direct executive role. They control staff, budgets and do stuff. State Minister This is new to me. It seems to basically mean junior ...
Mahinda Rajapaksa paying his last respects to the remains of the former South African President late Nelson Mandela. Photo via official Twitter feed. Dear Mahinda Rajapakse, At the outset , I would like to tell you one thing. I regret very much that we have never met and not had the opportunity to share our experience. Perhaps you could ...
The President’s recent and wide-ranging interview on Al Jazeera is interesting on a number of counts (download the episode in HD here). For starters, our President is clearly grossly uninformed or deliberately seeks to misinform. Take for example his assertion, around 8:50 into the interview, that European Union election monitors said the recently held Provincial Council elections in the ...
