The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka) recently unveiled the Chartered Tax Advisor course with the ambition of creating future-ready, globally savvy tax professionals.

The newly revamped curriculum of the Chartered Tax Advisor (CTA) programme was unveiled at the Institute premises in the presence of distinguished invitees, including D. R. S. Hapuarachchi, Commissioner General of Inland Revenue, Sanjaya Bandara, President of CA Sri Lanka, Heshana Kuruppu, Vice President of CA Sri Lanka, Tishan Subasinghe, Chairman of the School of Taxation, Saman Srilal, Chairman of the Curriculum Development Committee and Prasanna Liyanage, acting Chief Executive Officer of CA Sri Lanka.

 Formerly known as the Certified Tax Advisor programme, the newly revamped programme offers a comprehensive and contemporary curriculum that integrates the latest in Sri Lankan tax laws and incorporates global trends in economics, tax planning, transfer pricing, and international taxation.

 Building on the fact that the CA Sri Lanka tax programme is one of the most sought-after tax qualifications in the country, the newly launched Chartered Tax Advisor programme is offered at three levels. A student who completes the CTA Awareness (first level) can qualify as a ‘Certified Tax Accountant,’ while a student who completes the CTA Professional (second level) can qualify as a ‘Certified Tax Professional.’ The third and final level of the programme is the CTA Advisory level, where a student can qualify as a “Chartered Tax Advisor” upon successfully completing the final stage.

Building on the companion volumes, Guide to Literary Criticism and Guide to Poetry, this book carries literary education a stage further: it concentrates on fiction. It is meant to train the reader to get to grips with the range and variety of experience as well as the range and variety of forms and styles displayed in fiction from the age of Jane Austen to the present by writers of diverse backgrounds – British, Afro-American, Indian, migrant, and postcolonial. It illuminates the issues they raise, their standpoint, language and techniques they adopt, as shaped by the periods and countries in which they lived. The examples are taken from stories and novels prescribed in examination syllabuses for the G.C.E. Ordinary Level as well as Advanced Level, also for university examinations.

Guide to Fiction is essential reading for success-oriented students. It is also addressed to teachers as a means of enabling them to guide students. It will also prove rewarding to readers and writers of literature in English Sinhala and Tamil, and, indeed, to all those interested in the use of words – by sensitizing responses to language and by widening horizons.

D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Kelaniya, was Foundation Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge; Henry Charles Chapman Visiting Fellow, University of London; and Guest Professor at the University of Tubingen, West Germany. A well-established critic of twentieth century and postcolonial literature, and the leading authority on Sri Lankan English literature, his books in print include Images of the Raj: South Asia in the Literature of Empire (Macmillan, 1988), Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (Routledge, 2007), Salman Rushdie (Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd ed 2010) and Sri Lankan English Literature and the Sri Lankan People 1917-2003 (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa, 2nd ed 2007). He has edited Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness (Canada: Broadview Press, 3rd ed 2020), Kaleidoscope: An Anthology of Sri Lankan English Literature Vols 1 &2 (Vijitha Yapa, 2007, 2010). ((Sarasavi, 2023) Rs. 1,200/)

Al Jazeera journalist Minnelle Fernandez was hit by a water cannon while reporting the Inter University Students’ Federation march in Colombo on Thursday.The IUSF launched a protest march on Thursday to demand the release of activists detained during last year’s anti-government demonstrations.

The Police fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse the protesters at Wijerama Junction in Nugegoda, during which Al Jazeera journalist Minelle Fernandez was caught between the police water cannon fire and the demonstrators.

An Al Jazeera report said: Al Jazeera’s Minnelle Fernandez, reporting from the outskirts of the capital Colombo, said “volleys of tear gas canisters and water cannons” were fired on the students. She said the government was “going way over the top” in order to check the protests.

“University students have said that this kind of repression by the government is not going to stop them and silence them,” she said.

“They are saying the government’s campaign is to repress people and silence their voices, to stop the university movement which was involved in the anti-government movement we saw last year and led to a change in the government,” she added.

While Fernandez was live on air, she and the Al Jazeera cameraperson were also hit by water cannons.