The Times of London has a shocking story about 20,000 Tamils who were killed on the Sri Lankan beach by shelling as the army closed in on the Tamil Tigers (LTTE). Photographs taken by The Times “present clear evidence of an atrocity that comes close to matching Srebrenica, Darfur and other massacres of civilians.” More here…

Timothy John “Tim” Roemer’s formal nomination as the US ambassador to India reflects Obama administration’s determination to build strategic partnership with this important South Asian country. It may also mark the turning point in the Indo-US relationship. Roemer, 52, seems to have been selected for this crucial post owing to his moderate, bipartisan politics, and national security experience. He will replace David Campbell Mulford, who was until recently the US ambassador...

A major clash has broken out between Sikh groups in India following the murder of a Sikh preacher, Dera Sachh Khand leader Sant Ram Nand (56), in Vienna. Four trains have been set on fire and several Indian towns in Punjab and Haryana have witnessed violence and damage to property by rioters. (Meanwhile reports from London say that a Sikh temple there has been set on fire. Is it an accident or arson? See video here…) In India “one person was killed and four others were injured as Army...

America is America and Britain is Britain and the twain shall never meet (with apologies to Kipling). The latest instance shows how the two countries differ, at least in their approach to sex, while reacting to the ads placed in the classifieds website Craigslist. Well, the US is certainly more short-tempered when it comes to selling sex online, reports The Times. “Last week the classifieds website Craigslist finally bowed to pressure from antivice campaigners and removed the erotic services...

Agatha Christie (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) continues to get into limelight with dramatic regularity. Her play “Mousetrap” has become the world’s longest running play. And now Agatha Christie has set a new world record – for the book with the thickest spine (see photo above). Measuring over a foot long, with 4,032 pages, the volume contains the complete Miss Marple stories – all 12 novels and 20 short stories. With 252, 16-page hand-sewn sections, the production...

Who is responsible for the mess in Pakistan? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton trashed USA’s policy towards Pakistan over the last 30 years calling it “incoherent”, reports The Hindu. “She also acknowledged the U.S. shared the blame for the current mess in Pakistan.” More here… The world had known this fact for decades, except perhaps the mandarins in Washington. Now the question is how would the Obama administration make amends for the omissions and commissions of the...

Indian yoga guru Krishna Pattabhi Jois, pictured above aged 90 instructing a female student, passed away Wednesday. Jois, 93, brought the physically challenging form of yoga to the west, and counted among his followers Madonna, who included the traditional ashtanga chant on her Ray of Light album, and the actor Gwyneth Paltrow, reports The Guardian. “Ashtanga practitioners perform a series of yoga postures, known as asanas, daily and in strict sequential order. Beginners carry out the primary...

Was Shakespeare better known for his plays or his sonnets? Well we can go on arguing about that. The Independent carries a piece by Boyd Tonkin who introduces his selection of sonnets, while fans nominate their favourites to mark the 400th anniversary. “In 1609, the publisher Thomas Thorpe issued Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets in a handy quarto-sized edition, with a mysterious dedication to ‘Mr W.H.’, their ‘only begetter’, and the poem ‘A Lover’s Complaint’...

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – once the most feared terrorists in the world – seem to have finally lost their battle against the Sri Lanka government forces after the reported killing of its top leader Velupillai Prabhakaran (file photo above). Thus bringing to an end 26 years of brutal war for a separate Tamil homeland. For the chronology of Tamil separatist violent movement please see here… “The (Sri Lanka) government claimed that the last civilians being held...

India witnessed peaceful general elections in which the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) won a decisive victory. It was a personal triumph for Sonia Gandhi (photo above), President of the Congress Party, and her son, Rahul Gandhi, an alumni of Rollins College in Florida, who spearheaded the election campaign. India election results topped trend on Twitter worldwide. (See here…) Mr Manmohan Singh will take fresh oath this week, only the second Indian Prime Minister since...

An ailing 63-year-old Nobel laureate, who happens to be the most popular leader of Myanmar (Burma), is being further traumatized by the brute military junta that has locked her up in her house for most of the past two decades. The Burmese democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, faces as long as five years in the country’s most notorious jail after new charges were brought against her over a bizarre intrusion earlier this month at the lakeside home where she lives under house arrest, reports The Times...

In the annals of diplomacy, and now the war-on-terror, the USA’s continued overlooking of Pakistan’s dangerous role in proliferating nuclear arms within the country, and among rogue states, would remain a great mystery. A recent MSNBC report details more alarming news. “Without any public U.S. reproach, Pakistan is building two of the developing world’s largest plutonium production reactors, which experts say could lead to improvements in the quantity and quality of the country’s...

We seem to be passing through a phase in which people worldwide are displaying low level of toleration towards other religions or points of view. The growing suspicion is leading to bullying and hostility. This is posing a serious threat to world peace. An interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor throws light on the subject. Writes Walter Rodgers: “Today political and religious leaders tend to snooze their way through the various manifestations of religious coercion and intimidation...

On the World Press Freedom Day (May 3), Sri Lankan journalist Nalaka Gunawardene chose to pay a warm tribute to Pete Seeger, the American folk singer and a pioneer of protest music, who turned 90. Gunawardene wrote: “Since media freedom is inseparable from the democratic rights to dissent and protest, I will devote this blog post to salute Pete and his many decades of music for worthy causes — ranging from the American civil rights movement and opposing the Vietnam war to saving the environment...

The going rate paid by the Taliban for an attack on a police checkpoint in the western part of Afghanistan: $4 (repeat FOUR Dollars). While foreign consultants working for the Western aid agencies in Kabul can command salaries of $250,000 to $500,000 a year. Such are the profound ironies one comes across in the war-torn Afghanistan. “The high degree of wastage of aid money in Afghanistan has long been an open secret. In 2006, Jean Mazurelle, the then country director of the World Bank, calculated...

President Barack Obama’s 100 days in office were marked by diverse reactions in the media. A Sri Lankan journalist, Nalaka Gunawardene was impressed by Obama’s unusual step of using a prime-time televised news conference to deliver a public health message regarding swine flu on April 29, 2009. He quoted “President of the New Media World” Obama: “Wash your hands when you shake hands, cover your mouth when you cough. It sounds trivial, but it makes a huge difference. If you...

Alex Lees, 97, who was immortalised, not only in military, but cinematic history (in The Great Escape film – 1963) for his daredevil escape from the German prison camp in 1944, was buried yesterday at Paisley, the U.K. “But, while 50 of his fellow plotters were executed, after one of the most valiant but tragic escape attempts of the war, the young Royal Army Service Corps driver survived,” reports The Independent. More here… And here’s a snippet from The Great Escape...

Vienna, a city that has managed to remain clean, green and safe, and known for its music, theatre, art, history, coffee-bars and trams, is “world’s most liveable city”. According to a recent survey, Vienna is followed by Zurich and Geneva, while Auckland and Vancouver come joint fourth. All of these cities have a reputation – perhaps undeserved – for crashing dullness, reports The Independent. Cities with romantic, glitzy reputations, from New York (49th) to Rome (55th), fare...

Pakistan Government’s appeasement policy seems to be boomeranging. The Taliban has seized control of the strategically important district of Buner near Islamabad, provoking fears that militants are attempting to spread their insurgency and their extreme brand of Islam, reports The Independent. “The seizure by militants of the district in recent days underlines the strength of the insurgency and its ability to advance from the neighbouring Swat Valley which the Taliban controls, into...

In this age of super specialization, journalists also find themselves being labelled as ’science’, ‘environment’, ‘development’, ‘politics’, ‘film’, ‘health’, ‘defence’ journalists, etc. In the ’science’ category one person that became a legend was Sir John Maddox. Sir John, who is said to have reinvented science journalism, passed away on April 12. The Economist pays tribute to his memory: “Sir...

Although I was born and brought up in Delhi, India’s capital city, I now find it a challenge to live there for more than a fortnight at a stretch. Sam Miller, a former BBC journalist who has made Delhi his home since 2002, quite succinctly describes the city as ‘India’s dreamtown — and its purgatory.’ Sam Miller’s recent book Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity vividly captures the fascinating past, the generally unexplored sites, the smelly underbelly, and the strange magnetic...

India, described as world’s biggest democracy, goes to the polls to elect 543 members to the 15th Lok Sabha (lower house of the Parliament) in five phases (beginning April 16, and ending on May 13, 2009). The results of the election will be announced on May 16, 2009. India has 714 million registered voters (of the total 1,161,460,000 population). See here… And here… Indian authorities are stepping up security for political leaders, fearing possible militant attacks as a general...

In May 2008 Nepal (world’s youngest Republic that shares its borders with India and China) abolished monarchy, and King Gyanendra was given 15 days to leave the palace. A fortnight later the ex-king and his wife left Narayanhity Palace, thus ending 240-year-long Shah dynasty. The palace is now a museum and has so far attracted over 36,000 visitors in the capital city of Kathmandu. (The former king Gyanendra’s stepmother Queen Mother Ratna, and his grandfather’s 94-year-old concubine...

Italy celebrates this year the 2,000th birth anniversary of Roman Emperor Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus responsible for many of the Roman buildings, including the Colosseum. He also took drastic measures to restore sanity to the Roman Empire’s finances, which had been emptied by Nero’s extravagance (One is tempted to make comparisons with the present times!!!). The Independent pays handsome tribute to Emperor Vespasian: “In the judgement of one contemporary historian, Vespasian...

The world-wide interest in Titanic tragedy (of 1912) was fueled by the 1997 film on the sinking of this Olympic-class passenger liner. Interestingly, tales relating to The Titanic keep surfacing with surprising regularity. Here is the latest one attributed to the survivor Ms Barbara West (photo left)… The latest story emerged after the death of Barbara, one of the last survivors of the disaster, in 2007, reports The Times of London. Barbara narrated the bravery of her father Arthur West “who...