Navi Pillay’s 2026 Nobel Peace Prize celebrates a lifetime of challenging impunity and defending human dignity. Yet her legacy also raises difficult questions about accountability, political power and the credibility of international
by Our Diplomatic Affairs Editor Ron Dermer has tendered his resignation as Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs, and in doing so, he declared that his mission is complete. But what, exactly, was
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Indian National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval recently declared ‘poor governance’ led to uprisings that resulted in change of governments in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka over the past three-and-a-half years. Doval
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Summary: In “The Happiness Trap,” Martina Moneke challenges society’s obsession with happiness, showing how its pursuit often isolates, disappoints, and destabilizes the self. She contrasts fleeting, reactive happiness with steadier contentment, rooted
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Editorial Yet another brutal killing! That was in Kotahena. The headlines have almost become routine — another alleged underworld figure gunned down, another drug bust exposing shocking faces behind respectable masks. But
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by Our Economic Affairs Editor China has issued yet another important whitepaper today. Earth is the only home of all humanity, and the imperative to tackle climate change is no longer a
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In Afghanistan today, the mere mention of the Taliban’s “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” — the so-called religious police — is enough to send women and girls trembling. Ostensibly tasked
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by Our Economic Affairs Editor The 2026 Budget tabled by Finance Minister Anura Kumara Dissanayake arrives amid perhaps the most delicate balance in Sri Lanka’s post-independence economic history. Having emerged from the
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The British army has halted the use of white phosphorus munitions in Kenya following growing criticism over the chemical’s environmental and human impact. The decision emerged during a Kenyan parliamentary inquiry into
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Editorial Dick Cheney has died at 84, and with his passing, the world loses not a gentle statesman, nor a public servant, but a man who wielded power with a ruthlessness that
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by Our Correspondent in Colombo It was one of those rare evenings that linger gently in memory, a night when music spoke a language older and deeper than words. On the evening
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A new era in human reproduction In a gleaming fertility clinic somewhere in California’s Silicon Valley, a doctor peers through a microscope at a translucent sphere—barely larger than a grain of sand.
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Editor’s Note: This essay was originally published some seventy-five years ago in The New Lanka, October 1950 edition. Its reflections on governance, morality, and the responsibilities of leadership remain strikingly relevant today.
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Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations. ~ George Orwell Introduction In considering the epistemic and teleological dimensions of the observance of 2 November
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The highlight of the month of October is Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya’s official visit to India from October 16 to 18. This was the 55 year-old former academic’s first visit to India
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by Our Economic Affairs Editor When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Western governments unleashed a barrage of unprecedented sanctions aimed at strangling Moscow’s war economy. From semiconductor exports to banking
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