In brilliant investigative pieces of reporting, London's Daily Mail accused Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) long standing friend and Labour parliamentarian Keith Vaz of "a shameless abuse of power and office."

The newspaper, in two articles and an editorial published on March 16, accused Vaz that he used his position as chairman of the Home Affairs select Committee of the British House of Commons, which has a key role in law and order issues to intervene in a court case looking into the conduct of a conman "lawyer" whose license to practice law was cancelled.

by Neville Ladduwahetty  

The 38 House Members of the US who sent a joint letter dated March 9, 2009, have urged the Secretary of State to call the President of Sri Lanka "…and press for the full protection of civilians, authorization for active involvement by United Nations agencies in humanitarian relief, and progress towards political settlement that grants ethnic Tamils meaningful participation in national governance…". Referring to the IDP camps, the letter quotes from a Human Rights Watch report that describes them as "internment centres masquerading as welfare villages".

Anura MAITIPE  

The Jaffna reawakening project has taken the initiative to rehabilitate the Valukkaiaru scheme at Rs. 268 million to provide clean drinking water for people in Jaffna.  

Valukkaiaru is in the centre of Jaffna peninsula and it is a natural water purification plant.

by Shamindra Ferdinando 

Angry civilians Tuesday set fire to an LTTE ‘police’ station at Puthumathalan in the civilian safety zone after LTTE cadres shot dead parents of a child whom they made an abortive bid to abduct. They also shot dead the child before retreating amid violent protests, Navy spokesman Captain D. K. P. Dassanayake told The Island last night.

Sri Lanka Navy saved the lives of 643 civilians who had been fleeing amidst the LTTE's merciless firing. The Navy rescued them on the 18th March 2009 in the Northern seas. The naval personnel who were on the alert swiftly acting on the scene, foiled merciless LTTE motives to kill the fleeing civilians dispersing LTTE carders on board four dinghies.

Some time back I wrote an article about what I termed the interlocking directorates of non-Governmental organizations which, while pretending to be objective assessors of aid work, ended up giving each other lots of money. As it turned out, I did not then know the half of it. Discussing with a distinguished ambassador of another country the changing face of the UN, the preponderance of white as it were, I was introduced to another dimension when he mentioned that, not only were many of our new arbiters from the same set of countries, they also came from the same backgrounds. In short, he said, they came from NGOs, they planned to go back into them, and thus they saw themselves as serving the interests primarily of that particular community.

National Post   

As members of this editorial board watched tens of thousands of Tamil Canadians throng downtown Toronto on Monday, we couldn't help but be struck by a curious double-standard that afflicts Canadian ethnopolitics. To wit: Why are Canadian Tamils permitted to express support for terrorism in a manner that would be considered outrageous if the demonstrators were Arab or Muslim? 

The Associated Press 

The Sri Lankan military Wednesday accused international organizations of giving false information on the island's civil war, saying rebel sympathizers have "infiltrated" the groups.

by M.S. Shah Jahan 

"Thich Quang Duc self-immolated himself in protest of persecution of Buddhism in South Vietnam in 1963. I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think.... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him".

500 metric tonnes of mixed food commodities  

The World Food Program’s second major relief food consignment of 500 metric tonnes of mixed food commodities (rice, wheat, flour, lentils, sugar and vegetable oil) reached Puthumathalan, the Government designated ‘safe zone’ along the North-eastern coast of Mullaitivu, on a Government arranged ship sailing under ICRC flag.