The unusually lengthy list of nominees for this year's Best Picture Oscar features a slew of do-gooder films about the suffering of others. Most are about people who are at a considerable cultural distance from the white, middle-class Americans that are the primary consumers of these films.
On May 16, some 60 per cent of India’s 714 million-strong electorate delivered a definitive victory to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), giving it a commanding 262 seats in India’s 543-member parliament. The UPA’s principal opponent, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), took a severe beating, dropping down to 160 seats from the 181 it had claimed in 2004.
Over the course of a long and brutal war with Sri Lanka’s armed forces, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has emerged as one of the world’s most formidable insurgent groups.
Besides engaging the Sri Lankan government in a bloody battle for 26 years, the LTTE (or the ‘Tamil Tigers’) managed to seize substantial chunks of government territory, and operated these as a quasi-state for well over a decade. Today, however, the mighty Tigers are on the verge of an absolute military defeat. Will their demise bring peace to Sri Lanka?
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