Offbeat

Kilinochchi, February 5 (The New Indian Express): A Chennai-based outfit, Organization for Elangai Refugees Rehabilitation (OfERR), is helping Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who have returned to their original homes in north Sri Lanka, to overcome the many difficulties they face in re-settling in their homeland. Though the returnees are in no doubt about the correctness of their decision to come...

By Kanishkaa Balachandran/NIA Kadugannawa appears like any nondescript town in Sri Lanka as you approach it on the Colombo-Kandy highway. Paddy fields and coconut trees on either side make way for little shops in tin shacks and a series of garages selling automobile spare parts. As you drive down the town’s two-lane thoroughfare, tuk-tuks and tourist vans pay little heed...

Dhaka, February 2 (The Daily Star): Nur Hossain Patwary,  Chairman of the Haimchar Upazila Parishad in Chandpur, Bangladesh, has been sued for walking on a “human bridge” made up of the students of the Nilkamal Osmania High School in Haimchar on January 30. The event occurred during the school’s sports day in which Patwary, a local political leader, was the...

By Rahul Aijaz/Express Tribune  Several Pakistani stars have crossed over to Bollywood throughout the years, but only a chosen few have become superstars. Not that being in Bollywood’s 1Billion Club guarantees stardom, but it definitely helps build a reputation. Since Aamir Khan’s 2008 blockbuster Ghajni, a film’s success has been marked by how many crores it collects at the box office,...

London, January 31 (BBC): A vet has left behind her home in England to care for Sri Lanka’s street dogs. Janey Lowes from Barnard Castle, County Durham, has spent the past two years caring for the neglected animals. There are about three million street dogs on the island – about 60% of puppies born on the street do not survive...

By Meera Srinivasan/The Hindu Batticaloa, January 26: When Thangamanikkam Saradadevi, Vellathambi Junaida and Jayadeepa Padmasri sat on a panel listening to hundreds of people in Batticaloa speak of their missing relatives, of land occupied by the military and of their waning patience, they could instantly relate to them. This was not merely because the three women were trained as counsellors...

Lahore, January 26 (Express Tribune): Shah Rukh Khan’s Raees and Hritik Roshan’s Kaabil are to be released in Pakistan this week, breaking the four month ban on the screening of Bollywood films. Cinemas in Pakistan will again start screening Indian movies after imposing a ban on films from across the border over military tensions. The suspension of Indian screenings came...

By Frances Bulathsinghala Colombo, January 24 (Dawn): Muhammed Jahangir holds up bold, colored textiles with intricate traditional needlework. He explains them to the Sri Lankan customers at his trade stall — how the needlework is done and how painstaking it is. Entirely handmade in his all-women factory in south Punjab, some of these traditional forms of stitching date back to...

Colombo, January 23 (The New Indian Express):  Sri Lanka’s largest selling Tamil daily Virakesari has, in an editorial on Monday, called for a Jallikattu type non-partisan, peaceful, world-wide mass struggle in support of the Sri Lankan Tamil cause. Expressing amazement at the way Tamils in Tamil Nadu and abroad  spontaneously rose in defense of a cultural right shunning political parties...

Colombo, January 21 (The New Indian Express): An epitome of simplicity and piety, Mother Teresa went about barefoot even in the biting cold of Beijing, recalled A.Natarajan, India’s Consul General in Jaffna, while speaking at a talk given by the Mother’s biographer, Navin Chawla, in Jaffna on Friday. Reminiscing on his encounter with Mother Teresa in December 1995 at Beijing,...