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For a few rupees more... (cont) The man got his wife's lover to sign a transfer document complete with a two rupee stamp only to find that police in the central town of Badulla were not willing to enforce the deal, the independent Daily Mirror said. ''Police turned them away saying the law had no provision for such transfers,'' said the Mirror, adding it was still unclear which couple ''would live happily thereafter.'' The newspaper said the husband attempted the move as he saw no way of stopping his wife's affair with the other man. The state uses stamps to collect taxes on gifts or sale of property, generally proportionate to the value of the property being transferred. Two rupees is the lowest denomination valid in law.

A huge sunspot visible to the naked eye ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka April 2, Colombo: A gigantic dark sunspot about 13 times bigger than the surface area of the earth is now visible to the naked eye towards the westward edge of the sun giving a awesome seen. Dr. Chandana Jayaratne, Senior Lecturer in Physics, University of Colombo said that with the increase of solar activity once in every 11 years, this is something that we expected towards the end of last year or in the beginning of this year. Sunspots are low temperature dark patches on the sun's surface caused by a concentration of distorted magnetic field lines. With this sunspot, the largest ever observed since the past few decades, four solar flares had flop-up since last Wednesday ejecting an enormous amount of energetic charge particles, Dr. Jayaratne said. According to Dr. Jayaratne, in addition to the brilliant auroral displays at the north and south poles of the earth, we can expect several mishaps with the arrival these charged particles to earth during the cause (sic-Ed) of this week viz. blackout of short-wave radio communication due to ionospheric disturbances, explosion of some long-distance telephone systems and above all the inactivation of some artificial satellites causing interruptions to the world's TV and telecommunication networks. Dr. Jayaratne said that though this is very rare opportunity, never look at the sun directly as it will damage the eyes.

Off license!.... rest of the story... She had been stopped at a checkpoint 75 yards away from the wine shop, while transporting 51 bottles of arrack and two bottles of brandy from a wine shop in Katubedda to her husband's Chinese restaurant in Attidiya. A valid permit with all details and signed by the cashier of the wine shop had been disregarded by the inspector and she had been taken into custody together with the vehicle and the consignment of liquor valued at Rs. 11,850. At the station she had been made to sign a statement which was neither shown nor read out to her, if she wanted to leave the station. State Counsel conceded the arrest was unlawful as it was done without any legal authority under a long defunct gazette notice of 1951 based on the Excise Ordinance of 1947. BACK

MAKE LOVE....Rest of the story.. But to come back to basics, over the past three decades after much hard work, Sri Lanka emerged as a role model in Asia for population control. Its population growth was just over one percent whereas its neighbours averaged two per cent or more. This was one of the significant reasons why the country was able to sustain itself despite the state providing health and education free and economic growth being far from spectacular. Those were the days when birth control was a dirty word and sex education was unheard of. It was left to the ingenuity of Anandatissa de Alwis- then in advertising before plunging into full time politics- to coin the word 'Preethi' to try and market a condom to a population which spoke of such things only in hush-hush tones. Since then, the 'tikai,hondai' concept caught on and the average Sri Lankan family size was more often than not, two. We did not have to resort to forced sterilizations like Sanjay Gandhi did in India in the seventies but the government did offer a monetary incentive for both males and females opting for permanent methods of sterilization and after a few years, vasectomy was an accepted word in the Lankan lexicon, no longer spoken only in whispers. And now, our PM wants to change all that. He is thinking of offering incentives for larger families. No, there has no official announcement yet about the incentives for sterilization being scrapped and theoretically the state will be offering bonuses for both smaller and larger families- a little silly, to say the least. The question is, do we take the PM seriously? The PM's problem is that until recently, no one took him seriously. Why, unlike most of our former PMs, there isn't even a 'pet name'- like 'Methini', JR, Preme, Dee Bee or CBK to identify to him in a hurry; even his beloved wife Kusum must be calling him 'Babaalage thaaththa', we guess. This can only mean that he is yet to become a political icon of our times. So, is the 'make more babies' call his attempt at procuring a place in the history books? We must suspect it could be, even if it is at the expense of the efforts of meticulous health policy planners. That is if we take our PM seriously. Or else, there is an easier, possibly more realistic option: just ignore him, for he does not know what he is saying. BACK

DOCTORS GET RUNS Follow up to this story Cases will be filed against the Mount Lavinia Hotel ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka July 06, Colombo: A report will be published on Monday on the investigation into an incident of food poisoning at a Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) meeting last weekend. The Department of Public Health of the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) conducted the investigation. Dr. Nihal Perera says action will be taken against the Mount Lavinia Hotel, which supplied poisoned food, based on the findings of the report. Measures have already been taken to file cases against the hotel on two main charges. The first accusation to be leveled is that the supplier catering food for the occasion at the Bandaranayake International Conference Hall (BMICH), Mount Lavinia Hotel, was not registered in the CMC since 1988. The second charge is for providing bacteria-infected food. The GMOA has also decided to file a case against the leading hotel for the mental unrest (sic! -Ed) caused by the incident. Nearly 100 doctors fell sick at the get-together at the BMICH.Follow up BACK

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