Brother of new Prime Minister and former Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa was among three ministers sworn in by President Maithripala Sirisena. Meanwhile, Parliament Speaker Karu Jayasuriya said, an opportunity must be provided for the majority opinion on a stable government when Parliament meets next Wednesday. He said this after a meeting of the party leaders to discuss … Read more
What are researchers doing? The sixth mass extinction continues and is even accelerating, but conservation scientists, it is claimed, have no solutions to offer. Even more worrying, the researchers would be so pessimistic that the warnings they give could be counterproductive. But is this really the case? Two CNRS researchers* have addressed this question. They … Read more
Cognitive scientists at Lund University and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have demonstrated that experimentally induced changes in political attitudes can last over time. Notably, participants’ who verbally motivated these “false attitudes” exhibited the largest changes. This is the first time a lasting effect of the choice blindness phenomenon has been observed. In the study, a … Read more
The Commission has prepared a draft paper on “Simultaneous Elections – Constitutional and Legal Perspectives” and has sought opinions of all stakeholders including political parties, constitutional experts, bureaucrats, academia and public on the paper, before finalising its report and sending it to the government. In its draft, the law panel has recommended several amendments to … Read more
A government that is open to feedback, one that interacts with beneficiaries, it is for the first time that a Prime Minister regularly uses technology to reach out to people. Continuing the series of interactions via the Namo app, Prime Minister Modi interacted with beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. PM Modi reiterated the … Read more
Newly appointed Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, a little-known law professor, will lead a cabinet that includes the two coalition party heads, the League’s Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio of the 5-Star Movement. Both Salvini, head of the far-right, anti-immigrant League, and Di Maio, who leads 5-Star, a grassroots movement that has never been in … Read more
A day after UN special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura warned a regime assault on the rebel-held area of Idlib could affect 2.3 million people, Putin yesterday met Assad in the southern Russian city of Sochi. “After the success of the Syrian government army in the fight against the terrorists” the condition are in … Read more
