President Anura Kumara Disanayake directed the District Secretaries to allocate Rs. 1,400 billion in recurrent expenditure for the implementation of productive projects at the grassroots level over the next eight months.

The President made these remarks during a discussion held with the District Secretaries, on Thursday (27) at the Presidential Secretariat.

The President also emphasized that by developing the rural economy, the country’s economic growth could be elevated by 3% to 4%. He stressed the need to enhance existing economic opportunities and identify new sources of growth during the expansion of the economy to rural areas.

The pension schemes proposed in the 2025 budget were also deliberated upon during this meeting.

Moreover, the President pointed out that there is a prevailing negative perception of the public sector and that inefficiency within government services has contributed to this situation. He underscored the necessity of creating satisfied and effective government officials, and emphasized the need to improve the efficiency of public services.

Currently, 30,000 vacancies have been identified within the public service, and the President stated that the government plans to recruit for these positions in categories, which would complete the mid-level staffing of the public service.

The President emphasized that development is not limited to constructing buildings and bridges but also involves uplifting the fractured social structure, a responsibility that primarily lies with the District Secretaries.

Additionally, the District Secretaries raised issues specific to their districts, which were brought to the President’s attention, and extensive discussions were held on possible solutions and proposals.

The meeting was attended by the Minister of Public Administration, Provincial Councils and Local Government, Dr. Chandana Abeyratne; Secretary to the President, Dr. Nandika Sanath Kumanayake, Secretary to the Ministry of Public Administration Aloka Bandara, as well as the District Secretaries.

A leading independent journalist and book author from Vietnam has been sentenced to 30 months in jail over Facebook posts critical of the government.

Following a trial that lasted only for a few hours, a court in the capital Hanoi convicted 63-year-old Huy Duc of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state” through posting 13 articles on Facebook.

“These articles have a large number of interactions, comments and shares, causing negative impacts on social order and safety,” the indictment quoted by Vietnam News Agency read.

Huy Duc worked for influential state-run newspapers before authoring one of Vietnam’s most popular blogs and Facebook accounts, where he criticised the country’s communist leaders on issues such as corruption, media control and relations with China.

Huy Duc, whose real name is Truong Huy San, is a former senior army lieutenant. He was fired from a state news outlet in 2009 for criticising past actions by Vietnam’s former communist ally, the Soviet Union.

In 2012, Huy Duc spent a year at Harvard University on a Nieman Fellowship. During his time abroad, his account of life in Vietnam after the end of the war with the United States, The Winning Side, was published.

His conviction comes just a few months after blogger Duong Van Thai was jailed for 12 years on charges of publishing antistate information.

He had almost 120,000 followers on YouTube where he regularly recorded livestreams critical of the government.

In January, a prominent former lawyer was also jailed for three years over Facebook posts.

Shortly before his arrest in June, Huy Duc took aim online at Vietnam’s new powerful leader To Lam,  as well as his predecessor Nguyen Phu Trong. It is unclear if the charges were related to these particular posts.

Vietnam, a one-party state, has no free media and clamps down hard on any dissent. It is one of the world’s top jailers of journalists, according to the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) press freedom campaign group.

RSF said previously that his articles were “an invaluable source of information enabling the Vietnamese public to access censored information by the Hanoi regime”.

Rights campaigners say the government has in recent years intensified its crackdown on civil society.

In December, Vietnam enacted new online rules requiring Facebook and TikTok to verify user identities and hand over data to authorities.

Under “Decree 147”, all tech giants operating in Vietnam must verify user accounts by phone number or Vietnamese identification numbers and store that information alongside their full name and date of birth.

[Aljazeera]

Much like Afghanistan’s match against England, the political spectre over this clash is hard to put aside. Matches are rare between the countries with Australia – like England – taking a human rights stance and pledging to suspend bilateral ties while the Taliban remain in power.

Cricket Australia publicly demonstrated its commitment to the cause last month by hosting a T20 match featuring an Afghanistan women’s XI   in Melbourne, bringing the issue firmly back into the spotlight.

But underlining the complexities of the issue, Australia do play Afghanistan at ICC events – which has led to some criticism – and this intriguing, budding rivalry will resume in Lahore with much at stake.

Given the tournament’s sharp format, it’s basically sudden death, a virtual quarter-final, after Afghanistan once again knocked out England from an ICC event.