October 2026

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Police in Jaffna have summoned four people for questioning over a bust of Thileepan, the Tamil Tiger political leader, widening an investigation that has already reached the courts. The party that led the commemoration has defended the bust at every turn since police took it away. It has not said who put it there. The bust stood at Thileepan's memorial near the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple during the 12 days of commemorations marking his death in a hunger strike in 1987. More th

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka: The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) member whose lawsuit prevented the party’s elected president from taking office said Sunday that he would withdraw the case if ITAK held a new leadership election in accordance with its constitution. Para Chandrasekaram, an ITAK member from Trincomalee District considered close to M.A. Sumanthiran and often identified within the party with the Sumanthiran camp, made the offer at a news conference. “Conduct the election according to the l

STOCKHOLM — Can Xue, the Chinese avant-garde novelist whose experimental fiction has made her a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, has emerged as the bookmakers’ favorite to win this year’s award, according to odds offered by the British betting company Ladbrokes. Can Xue is listed at 10/1, ahead of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami at 14/1. Australian writer Gerald Murnane and the American novelist Thomas Pynchon are among the other writers near the top of the market.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A coalition of Sri Lankan lawyers and activists will begin a public campaign next week against the government’s proposed counterterrorism law, saying the bill retains many of the powers that made the country’s Prevention of Terrorism Act notorious, according to M.A. Sumanthiran, a constitutional lawyer and the acting general secretary of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK). The Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill was published in the government gazette on Sept. 22

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — A man was critically injured on Saturday night when he was struck by a train near his home in the Inuvil-Karaikal area of Jaffna, the police said. According to preliminary police information, the man was lying on the railway track and listening to music on headphones at the time. The train severed both of his legs and one arm. He was taken to the emergency treatment unit at Jaffna Teaching Hospital, where he remained in critical condition, according to the police. The Chun

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka: Sri Lankan police on Saturday arrested Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero, the general secretary of the Buddhist nationalist group Bodu Bala Sena, at a forest monastery in the Thiniyawala area of Kalutara District. Two courts issued warrants for his arrest this week after he failed to appear. The Colombo Crimes Division made the arrest on an outstanding court warrant, the police media spokesperson said. The monk had not been seen in public for most of the past weeks. After the