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In early April, a passenger aboard the Dutch expedition cruise ship MV Hondius fell ill with fever and respiratory distress while crossing the South Atlantic. He died on April 11. No tests were conducted. His body was removed from the vessel, and the ship continued its voyage. By early May, health authorities across three continents were scrambling to trace the movements of 147 people from 23 countries who had shared the same cabins and recirculated air. On 2 May 2026, WHO received a formal not

ANURADHAPURA, Sri Lanka — She was eleven years old, by her own account, when her mother first brought her to the private residential quarters inside one of the holiest Buddhist precincts in the world. She was fourteen when she told police what happened there. The man she named is Pallegama Hemarathana Thero, 71, the Atamasthanadhipathi — Chief Prelate and Custodian of the Eight Sacred Sites of Anuradhapura, and the senior-most administrative authority over the Sri Maha Bodhi: the sacred fig tr

BATTICALOA — President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Wednesday inaugurated the newly constructed three-storey public library building of the Batticaloa Municipal Council, an event that became the occasion for a pointed public reminder from former MP and ITAK General Secretary M.A. Sumanthiran that meaningful power-sharing remains an unfinished obligation of the state. The library — a modern three-storey structure funded jointly by the central government and the Eastern Provincial Council — was or

What had long been carefully cultivated as the polished public image of M.A. Sumanthiran, the gentleman politician, constitutional moderate, self-styled peace advocate within Tamil politics, and outspoken critic of violence committed in the name of Tamils, was dramatically shaken during yesterday’s explosive Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) central committee meeting in Vavuniya, according to multiple senior party sources who spoke to Jaffna Monitor. Behind closed doors, the meeting reportedl

Braving torrential rain, displaced Tamil residents of Valikamam North gathered for the fourth consecutive Friday outside the gates of the Sri Lanka Army’s Commando bungalow in Jaffna, demanding the return of approximately 651 acres of ancestral land from which they were forcibly displaced in June 1990 and to which they have been denied access for 34 years. The demonstration, which began on April 24 as a weekly series, is being carried out by landowners belonging to Grama Sevaka divisions 248, 2

At around 11:30 on the night of May 7, Kapila Chandrasena telephoned his domestic worker at his Barnes Place home in Colombo. He gave her a list: nightclothes, medicines, and two pairs of spectacles. Then he called again and added a fourth item — a blue cloth belt he kept beneath his sarong and used for exercise. He told her to pack everything into a bag and have it ready. Two men arrived by vehicle and took it away. The following morning, at approximately 7:35 a.m., that same room at the Pedri

Sri Lanka's Cabinet last Monday approved the establishment of a trust fund to manage the Jaffna Thiruvalluvar Cultural Centre, an 11-storey landmark built with approximately $12 million in Indian grant assistance — a move critics say effectively places a centre intended for Tamil cultural life under the influence of a Colombo ministry responsible for Buddhist, religious and cultural affairs, while marginalising the elected local authority on whose land the facility stands. The Cabinet decision,

By M.R. Narayan Swamy S. Krishna (assumed name) is a deeply frustrated doctor in Jaffna. He feels cheated that the Sri Lankan military is refusing to give up land belonging to his family, seized in the name of a war that ended way back in 2009. The specialist doctor, like so many Tamils, had high hopes when Marxist Anura Dissanayake became president in 2024, promising to address many of the historical wrongs, including the continued occupation of land belonging to Tamil civilians, predom