Sri Lanka - Page 2

Two men died in Sri Lanka this week while waiting in hours-long lines for fuel amid the country’s ongoing financial crisis, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported Thursday.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday said he would ask China for foreign aid again, after Beijing turned down a proposed $1.5 billion currency swap. China was a major contributor to Sri Lanka’s economic implosion, having destroyed some of the island’s key industries and bankrolled its corrupt socialist government with loans that could never be repaid.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Saturday that his country might increase its purchases of discounted oil from Russia, and accept more financial assistance from China, as the island nation spirals deeper into an economic crisis.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden presented the government of Sri Lanka — which is currently incapable of purchasing basic goods such as food and fuel due to a dire financial crisis — with an “environmental conservation” workshop this week, Sri Lanka’s News First website reported Tuesday.

The Minister of Power and Energy of Sri Lanka announced on Thursday that the socialist government would implement the use of a mobile phone app to monitor how much gasoline, diesel, and other fuel citizens purchase to prevent hoarding.

Officials in socialist Sri Lanka boasted on Thursday of having arrested 137 people for “hoarding” gasoline, diesel, and kerosene as the government struggles to purchase sufficient supplies or distribute the little it has efficiently — a crisis worsened by severe shortages of medicine and basic items like powdered milk.

The summer of 2022 is poised to deliver a dangerous challenge to overstressed power grids around the world, at a time of soaring energy prices and reduced fuel inventories thanks to the coronavirus pandemic aftermath and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe announced on Monday that his nation had “run out” of petroleum-based fuel during a national address in which he predicted that the next two months will be “the most difficult ones of our lives,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

A Sri Lankan petroleum industry leader told reporters Thursday there is a limited amount of fuel to distribute among Sri Lankans and this supply is expected to last no more than two to three days, Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror reported.

The Sri Lankan Defense Ministry on Tuesday ordered its forces to “shoot all those who plunder public property or cause personal harm” as riots swept across the island, causing at least eight deaths and leaving more than a hundred houses burned.

Local news outlets in Sri Lanka documented the destruction of over 50 homes and other properties belonging to government ministers and members of Parliament – including at least four tied to the ruling Rajapaksa family – between Monday night and Tuesday morning, a major escalation in violence in less than 24 hours after over a month of mostly peaceful protests.

Local media outlets reported on Monday night local time that over 150 people had been hospitalized and several found dead, including a member of Parliament, in Sri Lanka following a violent mob attack on a protester encampment in the capital, Colombo.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency order on Friday night — his second such act since April 1 — after violent protests demanding Gotabaya’s ouster gained renewed momentum in Colombo earlier that same day, Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror newspaper reported.

Sri Lanka’s current economic crisis will likely endure for at least two more years, the nation’s finance minister, Ali Sabry, told the Sri Lankan parliament on Wednesday, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Former President of Sri Lanka Maithripala Sirisena said on Friday that his successor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, had agreed to remove his brother Mahinda from the prime minister seat after a meeting with opposition parties.

Pope Francis welcomed a large assembly of Sri Lankan pilgrims in the Vatican on Monday to commemorate the 2019 Islamic State Easter Sunday massacre that claimed the lives of over 350 people.

The government of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka on Thursday announced “the lifting of the mandatory requirement to wear face masks outdoors is temporarily suspended, considering the large public gatherings currently taking place in the country.”

The president of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka Gotabaya Rajapaksa admitted in remarks on Monday that his controversial decision to ban the use of chemical fertilizers was a “mistake,” contributing to the nation’s worst economic crisis in its history.

Actor Jehan Appuhami announced that he would carry a cross on a three-day trek to the presidential offices in Sri Lanka demanding justice for the victims of the 2019 Easter bombings.

Sunday in Sri Lanka will mark the third Easter since Islamic State-affiliated jihadists bombed three churches and three Christian-frequented hotels on the holiest holiday in Christianity, killing over 200 people and injuring hundreds of others.

China’s state-run propaganda newspaper Global Times on Wednesday blamed American sanctions on Russia due to the war in Ukraine for Sri Lanka’s increasingly dire economic disaster – a disaster greatly exacerbated by the country taking out predatory loans from China.

Sri Lanka on Tuesday announced plans to temporarily default on its foreign debt, calling the measure a “last resort” designed to prevent “permanent damage” to the island nation’s economy amid its worst fiscal crisis in more than 70 years.

The collapse of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka has no brakes. Soaring costs of living, rolling power blackouts, food and medicine shortages, corruption, and gross mismanagement of its government have given forth to a massive wave of protests against the Southeast Asian nation’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Police in southern Sri Lanka’s Galle city found a 43-year-old man “dead in the driver’s seat” of his vehicle on Monday after he had waited in a gasoline line “for hours” amid Sri Lanka’s dire fuel shortage, the local News First website reported.

Sri Lankan police officers “assaulted” a group of Sri Lankan soldiers on Tuesday after the servicemen approached Sri Lanka’s parliament building in Colombo in an aggressive manner as part of an unannounced visit, Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror reported on Wednesday.

Protesters in Los Angeles, California, and Staten Island, New York, joined hundreds at home in Sri Lanka this week to demand that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, resign amid catastrophic shortages of most basic goods.

Almost all of the Sri Lankan government’s Cabinet — apart from the nation’s president and prime minister — resigned from their posts on Sunday amid Sri Lanka’s worsening economic crisis, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Monday.

Hundreds of protesters – reportedly armed with clubs, iron rods, stones, and other rudimentary weapons – attempted to storm President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s house in the Mirihana district of Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Thursday night, demanding his government address the chronic shortages of fuel, food, medicine, and electricity the country is experiencing.

Anti-government protests have been “widespread” across Sri Lanka for the past month due to the island nation’s worsening financial crisis, which has seen Sri Lankans go without sufficient food, fuel, and medicine for weeks, India’s the Week magazine reported this week for its April 3 issue.

A 63-year-old Sri Lankan domestic worker is on trial in the French department of Hauts-de-Seine this week after being accused of poisoning several people with sleeping pills, including a woman who died as a result.

Sri Lanka’s military deployed troops to hundreds of gas stations across the island nation this week after fuel shortages caused massive lines at the sites, with some crowds reporting murders and deaths among the masses, Reuters reported Tuesday.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Sunday asked Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to restructure payments for the roughly $5 billion Sri Lanka borrowed from China to build wasteful and unproductive projects under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Critics describe BRI as a form of colonialism, a “debt trap” set by imperialist China for Third World countries, and Sri Lanka often serves as Exhibit A for the prosecution.

A Sri Lankan man faces trial in December after allegedly engaging in sexual intercourse with a goat at least three times at an animal park in Tours, France.

New Zealand authorities imprisoned a man inspired by the Islamic State after catching him with a hunting knife and extremist videos — but at a certain point, despite grave fears he would attack others, they say they could do nothing but free him

(AFP) – Sri Lanka will cooperate with New Zealand’s investigation into a knife rampage by an Islamic State-inspired assailant from the South Asian nation, authorities said Saturday.

Six people have been stabbed by a Sri Lankan terrorist in Auckland, New Zealand, who was a “known threat to New Zealand”.