Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday returned home after wrapping up his two-day Sri Lanka visit, the first by an Indian premier in over 25 years.
Indian Coast Guard has arrested 25 Sri Lankan fishermen on charges of trespassing and illegal fishing in Indian waters, official sources said on Monday. The fishermen were illegally fishing in five boats in Indian waters 48 nautical miles east of Velankanni when they were arrested on Sunday night, they said.
Quite a few stars stepped out for promotional duties.
'Human trafficking from Bangladesh is a regular phenomenon and those people come here to work or in search of greener pastures. They are all over the country. We are giving them legal recognition and making them citizens so that they don't have to live in fear,' says R Nataraj, AIADMK MLA from Tamil Nadu.
A six-member delegation of Indian parliamentarians will visit Sri Lanka from April 8 to 12. The multi-party delegation visiting Colombo and Jaffna will not, however, include MPs from Tamil Nadu.
A day after India lodged a strong protest against detention of its fishermen by Sri Lankan Navy, a court in the island nation on Friday ordered the release of 34 fishermen, officials of a fishermen association in India said.
A five-member Indian parliamentary delegation has arrived here in the Sri Lankan capital on a four-day trip to hold bilateral talks. The delegation is scheduled to visit Tamil-dominated Jaffna city, the capital of Sri Lanka's Northern Province, the Indian High Commission in Colombo said on Tuesday.
Sri Lankan Navy has arrested 53 Indian fishermen in the last 24 hours for allegedly entering its waters illegally, prompting India to summon Lankan deputy high commissioner in New Delhi.
The arrest came as the group was departing Point Pedro in the northern Jaffna peninsula, Naval spokesman Commander Kosala Warnakulasuriya said, adding that among the arrested, 38 were men, 28 women and 14 children.
The meteorological department said that a deep depression in the Bay of Bengal was developing into a marginal cyclone and was set to hit the northern coast of Sri Lanka.
Superstar Rajinikanth's visit to Sri Lanka next month to inaugurate a housing scheme has met with opposition from pro-Tamil outfits in Chennai, who cautioned him from getting "involved" in the emotive ethnic issue.
Human rights abuses allegedly perpetrated in the war against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam haunted Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on the sidelines of the CHOGM summit with UK Prime Minister David Cameron on Saturday giving the island country an ultimatum to conduct a credible probe into the war crimes by March, failing which he would seek an international investigation.
India has taken up with authorities in Colombo the issue of arrest of 23 Tamil Nadu fishermen by Sri Lankan Navy when they were fishing near Katchatheevu in the Palk Straits on Sunday, Ministry of External Affairs said in New Delhi on Monday.
The country will not allow any "unilateral action" on its border and will pay any cost to thwart such attempts, he told the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha's state conference.
Voters in Sri Lanka's Tamil majority Northern Province on Saturday began voting in the first local elections in 25 years to elect a council to govern the former war zone, four years after the military defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam after decades of bloody civil war.
The 28-year-old left-arm pacer made the surprise announcement in a video interview released by Pakistani website Khel-Shel.
The fishermen were apprehended along with their seven boats and handed over to the Ilawalai police in northern Jaffna peninsular on Wednesday by a group of local fishermen.
The Sri Lankan navy on Tuesday arrested 25 Indian fishermen for allegedly poaching in the country's waters, officials said.
Munaf Patel joins Kandy Tuskers in LPL; Sarfaraz pulls out, Malinga unsure
India on Tuesday assured Tamils displaced by the 30-year-old civil war in Sri Lanka's north of all possible assistance in their resettlement process, as Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao visited the war-ravaged towns and interacted with locals.
At least 34 Indian fishermen have been arrested and their boats seized by the Sri Lankan Navy for allegedly fishing in the country's waters, authorities in Colombo said on Tuesday.
Sri Lanka's Criminal Investigation Department has arrested the head of the finance division of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation, a front organisation for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in Jaffna.He is alleged to have provided millions of rupees to the Tiger rebels for their war efforts. Investigations have claimed that he had provided TRO funds to slain LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, its political head S Thamil Selvan and several key members.
The actor said he took the decision after founders of Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, Vaiko and Thol Thirumavalavan respectively, and Tamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi leader T Velmurugan asked him to consider withdrawing from the programme.
The state-owned operator had earlier built airports in Libya and Yemen.
The International Organisation for Migration has helped about 90,000 displaced Tamils, lodged in the Menik Farm camps in Vavuniya, to return to their towns and villages in northern Sri Lanka.
In a major success, the Sri Lankan troops today seized the strategic Elephant Pass, the gateway to the Jaffna peninsula, dislodging the Tamil Tigers from their key bastion a week after capturing the rebels' de facto capital Kilinochcci in the island nation's embattled north.
Sri Lanka's main Tamil party on Sunday secured a landslide win in the historic provincial council polls held after a gap of 25 years in the former Tamil Tigers-ruled northern province, an outcome expected to give limited autonomy to the Tamils after the end of decades of ethnic war.
Journalist turned researcher Ganesh Sahathevan defends his adopted country and argues that Australia is safe for immigrants.
A behind-the-scenes account of how the three-decade old conflict came to an end in the island nation.
The 49 Indian fishermen, arrested by Sri Lankan navy recently, have been released and will return home in a couple of days, Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday said in Chennai.
"It is important that they feel that they're going to be able to live a future of hope and of opportunity, that the internally displaced people that are now in camps -- there are still approximately 100,000 of them -- that they be allowed to go back to their homes," US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake said.
Over 6,000 Tamil youths, including 1,000 women, have responded to a recruitment drive for the ethnic community in the former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam stronghold Jaffna for the first time in three-decades.
'Lee Kuan Yew told me he used to look to India, especially the writings of Nehru and Sardar Panikkar, for guidance on governance.' 'It's ironic that India should have so much to learn of the spirit of democracy from his son,' notes Sunanda K Datta-Ray.
Stepping up the momentum of their advance to capture the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam stronghold of Kilinochchi, the Lankan troops on Tuesday claimed to have killed scores of rebels after smashing through a string of LTTE bunkers. Government troops of the 53 Division, advancing from Kilaly village near Jaffna, carried out the ambush in the morning, a defence ministry official said
Fresh from their success in capturing the entire North-western coast, the Sri Lankan Air Force fighter jets on Sunday pounded bunkers of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and seized hundreds of arms and ammunitions while recovering the bodies of two militants, officials said.
Sri Lankan security forces on Saturday captured the strategic northern town of Pooneryn, the last Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam bastion in the west coast, giving the forces a vital land link to Jaffna.
"Looking forward to a wonderful day," Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweets before he leaves Colombo. G Sudhakar Nair/PTI reports from Anuradhapura
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday flew into Colombo in the early hours for a historic visit during which he is expected to hold talks with the country's top leadership.
Arumugam (named changed) told a team of visiting journalists at a fortified building in Jaffna that houses the former LTTE cadres that the LTTE chief was quite regular in attending training camps and used to personally supervise their programmes. "I worked for the LTTE for almost six years and was classified as a Black Sea Tiger," Arumugam told the journalists.
The LTTE forgot that Eelam was a means to an end -- that is a place of honour for Tamils and preservation of their identity and culture. By obdurately focussing on 'all or nothing' strategy, the LTTE lost everything and has brought upon untold misery on the Tamil people of Jaffna.
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