Briefs: Sri Lanka | At least 10 dead in mudslide

Sri Lanka has confirmed that at least 10 people died and 28 are still missing from a mudslide last week at a tea plantation, as officials began using voting and school records to count how many more people may be buried under the mud. The Disaster Management Center said yesterday that 1,755 people remain in temporary shelters because their homes were destroyed or made unsafe by last Wednesday’s disaster at the Koslanda plantation in Badulla district, about 220 kilometers east of Colombo. Officials initially reported that more than 250 people were buried under the mud but reduced the number drastically, creating confusion among the public.

East Timor | Portuguese justice officials pack up

The first of seven Portuguese citizens who have been ordered to leave the country left yesterday, a judicial source told Lusa. The same source said that the remaining six are expected to leave in the coming days, even though they have not yet been notified officially by the Timorese immigration authorities. The government in Dili ordered eight international judicial officers, seven of them Portuguese, (five judges, an attorney and a police officer) to abandon the country within 48 hours on Monday. On 24 October, parliament claimed “reasons of force majeure and the need to protect national interests”, to approve a resolution to suspend the international judicial workers’ contracts – about 50 of them, most of whom are Portuguese. The resolution basically called these workers incompetent saying they “lacked the technical capacity” to “provide the Timorese workers with proper knowledge”. The Portuguese foreign ministry reacted “with deep concern and discomfort” to the expulsion order and said it was going to reassess its cooperation programs with East Timor, particularly multilateral programs in the areas of justice and anticorruption.