The communities in the Batticaloa district range from Arab, East Asian and Indian traders who came by sailboat, to the Portuguese and Dutch who came to the island as invaders.

The majority community is Tamil speaking, split between Hindus, Christians and Muslims and the Sinhala speakers, who are a minority. Portuguese is still spoken here and there are half a dozen Tamil dialects you can hear as well. The ethnic Tamils, are, by far the larger community and consider this region as part of their homeland.

Batticaloa also was the epicentre of the conflict between the state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the East of Sri Lanka from the early 1980s for nearly three decades. The fighting, particularly during the 1980s was intense and was often in urban areas of the district which was held mostly by government troops.

Although the fighting was between the Tamil separatists and the government forces, as in any war ordinary civilians from all communities were the victims.

In the early days of the conflict, there were some Muslims who supported the struggle for the separate state of Tamil Eelam, says former Vice-Chancellor of the Eastern University Prof. T Jeyasingham. “Nineteen-ninety was the year when the Muslims turned over, meaning they began welcoming the Army and became government supporters,” he told EconomyNext in an interview.

That was also the time when LTTE cadres attacked a mosque in Kattankudy, a Batticaloa suburb which is exclusively Muslim, killing 147 worshippers. There were also instances when the Tigers looted shops in the area. By then the Tamils and the Muslims had become enemies.

Social Worker N Manoharan said, that the Muslims, by forming their own political parties won the support of the Sinhala-dominated government and then used that advantage to better their lot.

Because of the security situation, Tamil traders found it difficult to ply their trade to Colombo and other Sinhala majority areas.

“This helped the Muslims to take over the trade entirely. I think we made a few billionaires during that time,” Jeyasingham said.

The Easter Sunday attacks by an extremist group that had its roots in Kattankudy changed all that, the Professor says. “After the Easter (attacks) I think there were lots of changes in the dynamics. All the advantages they, the Muslims had, came to a standstill, so this may be the best time to negotiate with them where they can speak without all the flanks and this and that.”

One of the three churches hit by the suicide bombers on April 21, 2019 is the Zion Church in Batticaloa.

Fr. Rajan Rohaan of the American Mission in Batticaloa says soon after the attack Muslim Civil Society leaders contacted him as he is the current Chair of the Batticaloa Inter-religious Forum.

“They wanted to come to condole with the families and offer aid,” he said.

However, after discussing the offer with his fellow Pastors, Rohaan turned down the overture for the moment.

Rohaan says that the Tamils in Batticaloa saw the attack on the Zion Church as an “attack on the entire Tamil community, not just the Tamil Christians.”

As a result, the simmering anti-Muslim sentiments in the city and its surrounding area came to the surface. Groups of young Tamil men began distributing leaflets in the city urging their community to boycott Muslim shops and also forced Tamils working in Muslim establishments to stop.

This hugely disrupted the economy of the district. Many eateries are Muslim-owned in Batticaloa and Tamils are their customers. Trade is dominated by the Muslims as they have done over the centuries. The boycotts “robbed many vulnerable people of their livelihoods,” Selvarajah Ariyamalai, a Field Coordinator of the Suriya Womens’ Centre Batticaloa told EconomyNext in an interview.

Rohaan who is the Pastor of St John’s Church, observes that there is the rise of Nationalism in Batticaloa. “There is the rise of Tamil Nationalism and Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism. Then there is the Arabianisation of the Muslim community. So the people of Batticaloa are living with this extremism; that is the real challenge.”  

An hour’s bus ride from Batticaloa city lies the rural community of Oddamavadi and there resides Katugastota Mahindalankara Thero, the only Buddhist Monk involved in the inter-religious peace-building efforts.

His temple is in an area which once was a Sinhala-majority area, but now has more Tamils and mixed-race families. At the time of our visit, there were some local volunteers cleaning the temple grounds, and they were all Tamil speakers.

Mahindalankara Thero says the volunteers, mostly women, are children of Sinhala and Tamil parents. “Here we are trying to build a program that will bring peace among the communities,” he told EconomyNext in an interview.

For the Muslims, they have seized the opportunity to reach out to the other communities Abdul Latif Sabeel, Secretary of the Kattankudy Mosques Federation told EconomyNext.

“After this incident (4/21) the bonds between the Tamil and Muslim communities have strengthened,” he claimed. “We are working with Hindu temple Gurus and the Christian churches,” he said.

He went on to say that the Muslims cannot live in Sri Lanka as a separate group. “We have to build this feeling among all communities,” he added.

“At the same time we have to respect the other religious groups,” he said.

But, says Rohaan, it is not as easy as it sounds to build bridges to bring these communities together. The underlying tensions still remain, he believes.

He says, however, that there has to be a realization that all the communities have a single purpose.

He points out that as a “Civil Society actor I would like to work for democratic rights. As a Tamil, I cannot work for only the rights of Tamils. I have to work for the rights of the Muslims, Sinhalese and others.” (Colombo February 08, 2020)

Unlike the erotic art of lap dance, the 21st century Sri Lankan version was performed by  students  dressed in black leggings, yellow skirts and black short-sleeved jackets to symbolize the computers given by the education department.

They were to rhythmically punch the air with notebook computer replicas made of wood and painted black and yellow to match their highly modest costumes.

The troupe was seen rehearsing on Saturday  without the “laptops” and their teacher said they had orders to drop the props, but keep only the dance routine.(COLOMBO, February 3, 2018)

Cutting spending is generally opposed by socialists and Keynesians, who want the state to tax people more and spend more.

The government is also on a drive to raise more direct taxes (taxing investible capital and savings) rather than indirect taxes (taxing spending)

If spending is kept in check, the higher taxes can reduce or eliminate the budget deficit. Persistent budget deficit has pushed debt to dangerous levels, where a large part of revenues are now used to service debt. The government is trying to reduce the budget deficit to around 3.0 percent of gross domestic product from around 5.0 percent, which will help reduce the accumulation of new debt.

The International Monetary Fund has released a video outlining what the government is attempting to do.

Vietjetair began flying in 2011 as a domestic airline and has since expanded into international carrier flying to several ASEAN destinations.

The airline is headed by Nguyá»…n Thị PhÆ°Æ¡ng Thảo, one of Vietnam’s high flying female business executives.

Like Mai Kieu Lien, the female boss of Vinamilk, a privatized state firm which has expanded overseas and is one of the most sought after stocks by foreign funds, Thao also studied economics and finance in the Soviet Union.

Vietjetair hit the headlines shortly after launch after stewardesses danced on the isle wearing bikinis. earning the accoldate ‘Bikini Airline’. Vietnam’s civil aviation regulator fined the airline 100,000 dollars for having an unauthorized public performance.

Reuters, a news agency citing un-named sources said the airline was planning to offer 44.7 million shares to raise 194 million US dollars, at around 75,900 to 98,400 dong (less than 4 US dollars), which valued the airline at between 1.08 to 1.4 billion US dollars.

BNP, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and VietCapital are advising on the offering.

The airline, which is barely five years old, now has a fleet of 22 aircraft and has over 200 more on order.

Analysts say VietJet already has a 40 percent share of the domestic market and is likely to overtake state-run Vietnam Airlines as the top domestic carrier.
 
Its aircraft now carries advertising for domestic and international companies, including Pepsico. (Colombo/Dec02/2016)
 

"This will create competition between fibre optic cables, (mobile phone) towers and balloons," Minister of Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure Harin Fernando said.

"As a government we will bring in the latest technology. Competition and market forces will reduce costs and prices," he told a news conference when asked if the Google project will reduce costs for consumers.

The government has signed a one-year deal with the Internet giant to start flight trials of Project Loon,  a research and development project aimed at providing broadband access to remote areas using high-altitude balloons to relay wireless signals.

There will be several Google radar-controlled balloons airborne at the same time to provide uninterrupted coverage, flying at an altitude of 75,000 feet, far above the 35,000 feet cruising height of airliners.

Fernando said the biggest cost of telecommunications operators was base stations, a network of which was needed to provide the widest coverage for subscribers.

"With the Google project, they no longer need to put up base stations. Instead of fixed base stations they can use floating balloons," Fernando said. "In future there would be no need for big investments in telecom towers. The Google balloons can provide coverage for the whole island."

Muhunthan Canagey, Managing Director of the Information and Communications Technology Agency, said the authorities were obliged to introduce new technology that benefit consumers even if there was opposition from existing operators.

"This technology is disruptive technology,” Canagey told the news conference.

"So it’s normal for an industry to fear new technology which will completely revolutionise what has happened for the past 30-40 years, just like the way Uber changed the transportation industry and Pay Pal the financial industry.

"As a government it is important for us to embrace new technology," Canagey said. "We can’t be held back by legacy (carriers) and not allow citizens to access new technology.”

Fernando said they had held talks with local telcos and all except one were supporting the Google Loon project.

"This project will help save costs of mobile phone operators. It will reduce tower costs by one-third," he said.

Canagey said local telecom operators might offer much higher bandwidths when they start competing with Google’s balloons which can cover a bigger area than fixed towers and base station manufacturers will need to lower prices as balloons offer cheaper services.

Canagey said the government intends to bring in a new ecosystem and let market forces start working.(Colombo/Feb2/2016)

The promotional clip, narrated by television show host Jeremy Clarkson, shows a family receiving in about 30 minutes replacement soccer shoes for the one chewed up by its dog.

"In time, there will be a family of Amazon drones. Different designs for different environments," Clarkson says.

The video shows the box containing the shoes ordered by the family fitting seamlessly into the body of the drone.

It then rises vertically, in helicopter style, for nearly 400 feet, after which it assumes a horizontal orientation, flying like an airplane.

Clarkson the drone in the clip could fly for 15 minutes.

The video shows the drone approaching its targeted landing spot, dropping the package, then taking off again, presumably to return where it came from.

The launch of the video appeared to be timed ahead of "Cyber Monday", one of the biggest shopping events for electronics retailers.

Amazon did not say when it hoped to have the drones in service.

A senior Federal Aviation Administration official said in June the agency expects to finalize regulations commercial drone operations over the next 12 months.

This would be a substantially shorter period than previous forecasts that had anticipated rules allowing commercial operations by the end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017.

Google and Wal-Mart are other retailers developing drones for package delivery. (NEW YORK, Nov 29

The International Astronomical Center (IAC) sponsored by United Arab Emirates fielded teams from the UAE Space Agency, SETI Institute, Dexter Southfield, and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Insitut fur Raumfarhrtsysteme to rendezvous with the falling object on board a Gulfstream executive jet.

The video was filmed at 06.18 Universal time on November 13.

Dr Dorothy Chan, Chairperson of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) International said what was required was a clear, long-term mobility vision, changing travelling habits through land use patterns, an integrated transport system and a pedestrian friendly environment.

"There’s been a lot of talk on promoting Colombo as a logistics hub but this will not happen easily if you cannot maintain a smooth road and transport network to maintain mobility in the city," she told the annual conference of the CILT Sri Lanka branch Tuesday.

Saying she’d already heard of complaints of congestion and more cars on the roads, Chan, former Transport Commissioner of Hong Kong, said: "How to manage city mobility is important if we are to enjoy the benefits of economic growth."

With the volume of traffic exceeding the capacity of roads, she warned that congestion will get worse as the city develops. "Road traffic grows faster than road capacity. Gridlock can happen in Colombo if you’re not careful."

Key challenges were the increase in private vehicles, incomplete public transport networks, insufficient management of road space and regulations not good enough to develop integrated transport networks.

"The more roads you build, the more traffic there’ll be to fill up that space," Chan said. "It’s simply not possible to match the building of roads to meet unrestricted traffic growth."

She cited the example of China where cities are growing fast and so is the people’s purchasing power with car ownership growing to 33 million in 2008 from one million cars in 1994. As a result, Chinese cities experienced serious traffic congestion and bus speeds fell by 60% and bus punctuality fell by 88%.

"There were also important impacts on the environment with increased greenhouse gas emissions, more accidents, more delays, and deterioration in urban mobility which indirectly increases costs of production of goods and services."

Hong Kong’s experience was relevant to Asian cities, she said, describing how the 1,104 square kilometre city state with 7.2 million people avoided gridlock with taxes restricting private car ownership and good traffic planning and management.

Hong Kong’s three guiding principles were continuous improvement in transport infrastructure like roads, rail, buses, airports, ports and bridges, expansion and improvement of public transport, and encouraging efficient use of road space by giving priority to "economic carriers" like buses.

Traffic management using surveillance cameras, automatic vehicle detectors and tolls, remote-controlled traffic lights, and area traffic control systems, helped shorten journey time 20-40%, increased road capacity by 17-25%, reduced accident rates by 15-50% and reduced fuel consumption by about 40%.

"Many of us prefer to use public transport and leave our cars at home," Chan said. "Hong Kong is served by a variety of public transport that’s probably unparalleled in the world. We are spoiled."

Hong Kong’s policy is to develop rail as the backbone of its transport system with buses being the other main carrier and trams, ferries, minibuses and taxis also used.
Rail’s market share of the public transport system has increased to 43% today from 39% in 2013 because of a shift from cars to rail.

Although Hong Kong does not have Bus Rapid Transit, Chan said BRT will help Colombo in building up a good public transport network, noting how such systems elsewhere reduced congestion caused by cars and equals light rail in mass mobility but at much less construction cost.