The health ministry reported two confirmed cases: a 24-year-old woman, a poultry worker, inAnhui province who died on 1 November and a nine-year-old boy from Hunan who fell ill but recovered, the official Xinhua news agency said yesterday. Launched presidential campaign by rejecting demands for Tamil autonomy. Has also vowed to review the 2002 ceasefire and indicated that Norway will no longer play a role as peace-broker. He opposes privatisation, favouring subsidy schemes and protecting rural livelihoods.THE DOVERanil Wickramasinghe, Opposition Leader, United National PartyRight-of-centre former prime minister from a leading political family with strong media connections.

Pledged to uphold current ceasefire agreement, which he helped draw up in 2001. Credited with pushing the country through an impressive economic transformation during his last premiership, he is generally backed by the business community.. “We will suffer.”THE HAWKMahinda Rajapaksa, Prime Minister, United People’s Freedom AllianceLeft-leaning, with strong ties to Buddhist clergy and Sinhalese nationalists. When the outgoing President Kumaratunga steps down, it will not only be the end of her 11 years in office. Her family has been at the centre of Sri Lankan politics since the 1950s, when her father SWRD Bandaranaike was Prime Minister.After he was assassinated in 1959 – when Ms Kumaratunga was only 14 years old – her mother, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, became the world’s first female prime minister.Until today, Ms Kumaratunga has dominated politics here.

They say that if the law allowed her to run again, she would win easily. In fact, she did not want to let go of office and tried to stay on for another year, but the Supreme Court ruled that she had had her two terms and had to go.In recent years she has often appeared to change her position drastically, but somehow she has managed to steer something of a middle course between Mr Wickramasinghe’s conciliatory approach to the Tamil Tigers and the hardliners.Some observers fear that, without her there to balance the two, Sri Lankan politics will become completely polarised on the issue.Meanwhile, down amid the wooden shanties of the tsunami survivors at Korala Wella, Ms Pieris shrugs. But in the newspaper interview, a senior member of his party suddenly boasted of having caused a split in the Tigers.Today’s election also marks the end of a dynasty. On the face of it, it is in the Tigers’ interest to allow their people to vote. But they have been sending conflicting signals.The reason may have something to do with a startling, apparent admission made by a member of Mr Wickramasinghe’s party to a Tamil newspaper a week or so ago. He did so at his own expense.”If anyone can do anything, he can do it,” he says “Look at what happened when he was Prime Minister He came in and he changed everything There are no more checkpoints in Colombo.