Colombo - Sri Lanka's government insisted Friday on the cremation of all coronavirus victims, rejecting international pleas and recommendations from its own experts to allow the Muslim minority to bury their dead in line with Islamic custom.

Colombo - Sri Lanka welcomed its first foreign tourists in nine months Monday even as a new deadlier strain of the coronavirus gripped the island.

Colombo - Outrage is mounting in Sri Lanka after at least 15 Muslim coronavirus victims, including a baby, were cremated against family wishes and in contravention of Islamic funeral rites.

Colombo - Cyclone Burevi hit Sri Lanka overnight, rattling the island nation but leaving it relatively unscathed on its way to southern India, officials said Thursday.

Colombo - Sri Lanka and southern India battened down the hatches for the second time in a week on Wednesday ahead of the scheduled arrival of another cyclone from the Bay of Bengal.

Colombo - Sri Lanka freed hundreds of prisoners and said it would release thousands more after a riot sparked by anger over coronavirus cases at one of its many overcrowded jails left nine inmates dead and 113 wounded.

Colombo - Sri Lankan prison guards shot dead eight inmates and wounded at least 71 others in a riot sparked by anger over rising coronavirus infections, officials said Monday.

Colombo - Commemorations for Tamil Tiger rebels killed in Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war were banned on Friday after court petitions by the government of strongman President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Colombo - Sri Lanka has saved some 120 pilot whales in a gruelling overnight rescue involving the navy, officials said Tuesday, after the island nation's biggest stranding.

Colombo - Sri Lanka's navy and volunteers rescued 120 pilot whales stranded in the country's biggest mass beaching, but at least two injured animals were found dead, officials said.

Colombo - Sri Lanka has started shipping 242 containers of hazardous waste, including body parts from mortuaries, back to Britain after a two year court battle by an environment watchdog, officials said Saturday.

Colombo - Sri Lanka on Thursday indicted the Greek skipper of a fire-damaged supertanker for causing an oil spill and failing to report the environmental damage to the island's waters.

Colombo - More than 1,000 workers have tested positive for coronavirus at a Sri Lanka factory that until August was producing surgical masks for the US, officials said Wednesday, as they scrambled to find the source of the country's biggest outbreak.

Colombo - The slaughter of cattle will soon be banned in Sri Lanka, the government said Tuesday, in a move widely viewed as a concession to increasingly influential Buddhists in the ruling party.

Colombo - Sri Lanka's president has ordered the termination of a $1.5-billion Japanese-funded light rail project, saying it is not a "cost-effective solution" for the congested capital Colombo, officials said Thursday.

Colombo - Sri Lanka will file negligence and pollution charges against the Greek skipper of an oil tanker that leaked fuel off the island nation's coast after a week-long fire, authorities said Wednesday.

Colombo - Sri Lankan military divers fixed a fuel leak from the engine of a fire-damaged oil tanker off the island's east coast, the navy said Saturday, in a salvage operation after the huge week-long blaze.

Colombo - International experts boarded an oil tanker stricken off Sri Lanka to begin salvage operations, the navy said Thursday, as firefighters looked to contain a large oil slick in the Indian Ocean.

Colombo - A blaze on a stricken oil tanker off Sri Lanka was finally extinguished Wednesday, authorities said, but while no crude has escaped the cargo, diesel leaking from the ship's engine raised fears for the environment.

Colombo - A stricken oil tanker off Sri Lanka that has been on fire since last week has left a kilometre-long (0.6 mile) slick across the Indian Ocean, the country's navy said Wednesday, sparking fears of an environmental disaster.