The Exams Department manually uploads every test score, while the UGC takes a long time verifying each candidate’s residence. Some universities are teaching five or six cohorts at once. It wasn’t always this way: students once entered university just six months after sitting their exams.

With Hormuz unlikely to open this year, alternate pipelines under attack, and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait newly closed to Saudi oil tankers, global oil prices have spiked. In Sri Lanka, the energy minister signals potential price hikes at the pump.

Diplomats grow frustrated with the Foreign Ministry, as Vijitha Herath is slow to implement existing agreements. The ministry has also missed important summits like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. But incompetence alone may not explain the diplomatic blunders.

Rather cleverly Music Matters is charging performers 300 bucks at their open mic night on Friday, presumably to dole out compensation to the audience after. Leave it to the professionals instead, with a Slipping Chairs

Namal Rajapaksa was arrested for the fourth time last week. He’s in a cell with other prisoners. In one previous case, he was acquitted. This time might be different. The SLPP is taking no chances, mobilising their supporters through rallies. The government, meanwhile, is also taking to the streets.

“There is no difference between the NPP and JVP, ” said Mahinda Jayasinghe, a JVP trade unionist and deputy minister. In the last two years, the JVP recruited NPPers into its ranks, consolidated its decision-making power, and ran political classes for NPPers. Some NPPers are now disillusioned.

When a military intelligence corporal got information from Tamil Nadu intelligence that Mohamed Zahran killed two policemen five months before the Easter Bombings, he said his superior asked him to look away. An ex-military intelligence director denies allegations made to the police.

The first ever Indo-Lanka defence cooperation agreement was signed last year. Now the Indian defence minister is in town. The foreign minister told The Examiner that reviewing the agreement or its implementation wasn’t on the agenda. No joint statement was released during the visit.