Sri Lanka

The Sri Lankan government has decided to formally end a cease-fire with Tamil Tiger rebels that had largely collapsed since a resurgence in fighting two years ago. The Cabinet unanimously approved Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake's proposal to pull out from the 2002 truce, Media Minister Anura Yapa said.

A pro-government militia of former Tamil Tiger rebels won a local election in the turbulent eastern Sri Lankan city of Batticaloa despite allegations that it used child soldiers, extorted money from businessmen and carried out killings, state TV reported today. The militia, known as the Karuna group, took 53% of the final vote, giving it 11 of the 19 seats on the municipal council, Rupavahini Television announced, citing the country's elections commissioner. Hoping to prevent violence -- especially a rebel attack -- during the voting, the government flooded the area with police.

Sri Lanka's victory this week after a 25-year battle against the Tamil Tiger rebels represents a rare success story for governments fighting insurgencies. Even as leaders in Colombo, the capital, declared a national holiday and citizens danced in the streets, military planners and analysts around the world began scrutinizing the war for lessons on how to fight Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups.

The number of civilian deaths in Sri Lanka has risen sharply in the last month, Human Rights Watch said Friday, calling on both sides in the protracted civil war to stop firing at civilians or shelling areas where they are concentrated. The government has been battling the Tamil Tiger rebel group, which wants a homeland for the Tamil minority, for the last 25 years. In recent weeks the army has stepped up its offensive, boxing in the rebels in a smaller area in the north.

The United Nations said today that cluster bombs had hit the last functioning hospital in Sri Lanka's northern war zone and that 52 civilians had been killed in the region in the previous 24 hours. On Tuesday, the United States, European Union, Japan and Norway urged the Tamil Tiger rebels to consider surrendering to avoid more deaths. It was the first time cluster bombs were known to have been used in the government's push to defeat the rebels since the collapse of a cease-fire in 2006.

Heavy rains have destroyed or damaged hundreds of shelters housing ethnic Tamils displaced during Sri Lanka's civil war, the United Nations said Monday. The weekend flooding has added to concern over the welfare of nearly 300,000 people who have been living in tents and makeshift shelters since the May defeat by government forces of the Tamil Tigers, ending their 25-year armed campaign for a homeland for the ethnic Tamil minority. Parts of the Manik Farm camp in the island's northeast were inundated, and about 1,925 shelters may have been damaged or destroyed, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement.

A suicide bomber killed 14 people at an opening ceremony for a marathon Sunday, including a government minister and a former Olympian. More than 90 others were wounded. Sri Lankan officials blamed the bombing on the Tamil Tigers, rebels who have fought since 1983 for an independent homeland for the ethnic minority Tamils, who believe they have been marginalized for decades by successive governments run by ethnic majority Sinhalese.

By train, the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn is five stops from the suits and ties of Lower Manhattan and 14 stops from the tourists of Times Square. Some of the streets are lined with trees and brownstones, others with abandoned buildings and shady convenience stores. Easy to find here are Arabic pastries, African clothing and discounted packs of socks and T-shirts. There are multiple mosques, and a mural of Malcolm X with the words, "Stand for Something or Fall for Anything."

After being beaten and tortured by the Sri Lankan army, Ahilan Nadarajah fled his native country in 2001. He sought asylum in Immigration Court here and won, twice. But because of secret evidence accusing him of being a terrorist, the U.S. government kept him behind bars and then on an electronic monitor. Seven years after his arrival, Nadarajah's ordeal is finally coming to an end. Late last week, the U.S.