JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Oct. 19 — Officers from Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) conducted an extensive search of the Jaffna office of former cabinet minister and Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) leader Douglas Devananda on Monday, spending several hours examining the building and its surrounding premises. The search took place at No. 273, Stanley Road, Jaffna, where Mr. Devananda maintains his political office. According to CID officers, investigators obtained a search war

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Oct. 18 — China Merchants Port Holdings, the Chinese state-controlled port operator, has abandoned its plan to build a $392 million (about Rs. 130 billion) logistics complex in the Port of Colombo. The project had been billed as the largest of its kind in South Asia and had stalled for more than three years. In a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Oct. 15, the company said the parties had agreed not to proceed. It and its partners signed a settlement ending the shareh

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Oct. 18 — The Sri Lankan military returned 11.23 acres of private land in Jaffna this week, about 0.4 percent of the more than 2,500 acres of private land that the security forces still occupy in the Tamil-majority district, according to government figures. The release documents were handed over at the Jaffna District Secretariat by Col. W.M.A.M. Nisanka, the senior civil affairs officer at the military’s Palaly headquarters, to the district secretary, Maruthalingam Pratheepa