Word: lankans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
DIED. SIRIMAVO BANDARANAIKE, 84, the first woman elected to lead a nation; in Sri Lanka. Bandaranaike, who first became Sri Lankan Prime Minister 40 years ago, served two more separate terms during her turbulent and somewhat patchy political career, resigning from her last post in August. She may have been the first national leader to address the world as "a woman and a mother," but she could be ruthless: her hamhanded suppression of a Marxist insurrection in 1971 resulted in 20,000 casualties. Bandaranaike had a heart attack in a car on her way home from voting in the elections...
...English Patient, he returns to the literary world with Anil's Ghost-a tale that verges on the same dark terrain: war. Waiting years for him to publish again, one could not imagine where on the globe Ondaatje would choose to place his pen next. The Sri Lankan-born author (transplanted to Canada) who has written evocative pieces set in the old West, the early jazz era and World War II, chooses a different time and place for this story: the Sri Lanka of the present...
...decide where it stands in this conflict. Ondaatje has taken on the dangerous task of describing a war about which few people know the truth. The media in Sri Lanka is often censored, and even as this review is written, the conflict is escalating. As a native Sri Lankan, Ondaatje presumably possesses a more intimate familiarity with the details. But information today is sparse and often edited by the government. Perhaps this is behind the looser setting-or perhaps Ondaatje is intentionally distancing himself from a painful reality...
...Lankan army pays out a lifetime's salary to the families of its slain soldiers - and right now that policy may be set to place new strains on the defense budget. Tamil Tiger rebel forces reportedly broke through government lines near the town of Jaffna Wednesday, two days after President Chandrika Kumaratunga rejected a rebel truce offer allowing her troops safe passage out of the beleaguered Jaffna peninsula, vowing instead to defend the territory to the last man. The secessionist fighters, who regard Jaffna as the capital of their desired homeland of Tamil Eelam, last week delivered a crushing blow...
...plan, let alone engender Tamil enthusiasm. And a military defeat of the Tigers looks more and more like wishful thinking. Israel is reported to have recently helped out the government with emergency weapons shipments, and the U.S. has reportedly been sending small numbers of specialists to train the Sri Lankan military since 1994. India, which previously helped the government in Colombo against the rebels but was asked to leave in 1995, is staying out of the conflict, although it has reportedly offered to help evacuate the beleaguered Sri Lankan forces. But right now Colombo's most useful international ally...