According to sources, Mr Babchenko had left his apartment to buy provisions and was killed upon his return. 

The incident is being treated as an assassination, with Ukraine’s Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman having already accused Russia of plotting Mr Babchenko’s murder. 

Working as a Kremlin critic, Mr Babchenko was indeed a popular hate figure for the Russian capital of Moscow. 

"I am confident that the Russian totalitarian machine did not forgive him his honesty and principled stance," says Mr Grosyman. 

The Ukrainian Prime Minister furthermore added that the Russian journalist was a “true friend of Ukraine who was telling the world the truth about Russian investigation”. 

In responding to Ukraine, Moscow has wholeheartedly denied any allegation that the Russian Government has had anything to do with the journalist’s murder. 

In fact, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has coined the accusation from Ukraine as being part of the country’s anti-Russian campaign. Furthermore, in a statement, Mr Lavrov also brought to light the reality that journalists have been killed with impunity in Ukraine in the past. 

According to the Kremlin, Ukraine has become a “very dangerous place” for journalists and the capital of Kiev is not offering adequate protection for them. 

On this note, Russia has said that “bloody crimes” has become routine for the “Kiev regime”. Nonetheless, the country has opened up an investigation for Mr Babchenko’s murder. 

A drawing of Mr Babchenko’s assassin has recently been released, depicting a man aged being 40 and 45, with a beard and wearing a cap.

Source: Sky News

In addressing the ongoing investigation, head of Kiev police Andrei Krischenko has said that the police are approaching the case with two motives in mind: Mr Babchenko’s work and his civic postion. 

Furthermore, Dmitry Muratov, founder of the Novaya Gazeta paper to which Mr Babchenko had written for, has said that his publication are commencing with their own individual inquiry into the attack. 

“100 per cent this is connected to his journalism," Muratov said. "I can't tell you who did it, but I can tell you we're going to try to find out."

The course has been designed for provincial political leaders, based on a concept by Basil Rajapaksa. The councilors have expressed their disappointment saying that they, as politicians, did not need to follow any course so far. The course fee is Rs.72,000. The institute has further mentioned in a letter that the fee is payable in 12 installments and they are able to assist to obtain a loan from a state bank, if need.

The institute highlights that this course has been designed using educational assessment methods suitable for adults and will not include traditional examination methods. They further mention that after completing this course, it is possible to continue upto degree level.

After seeing the letter sent by the institute, UPF urban councilors have mentioned that they do not need a diploma or a degree to collect votes. They have further said that they do not have adequate time to follow courses.

They emphasized that courses cannot create national leaders and it requires a proper party policy and party leaders must give opportunities for suitable persons.

The report presents statistics about the issues faced by religious minorities, although religious freedom is protected by the constitution.

The above report titled Sri Lanka 2017 International Religious Freedom Report was launched yesterday (29) at the US State Department with the presence of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and International Religious Freedom Ambassador Sam Brownbank.

According to the report, police reports have verified harassments faced by Muslim and Christian people. The report emphasizes that religious minorities in Sri Lanka face harassments although Buddhism is considered the main religion and the constitution has protected religious freedom.

The report further mentions that the National Evangelical Alliance has reported 97 cases of violence/ threatening and another 97 cases of interrupting religious practices.

Furthermore, the report says that the Sri Lankan Muslim Council has reported incidents of violence during Ramadan season. The report further highlights acts of violence carried out by Buddhist extremists against Muslim community in various parts of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka 2017 International Religious Freedom Report says that ‘Buddhist’ extremist groups such as Bodu Bala Sena continue to oppress religious minorities through social media as well.

The report extensively describes many incidents of violence including attacks and harassments against religious minorities took place from 2011 to 2017.

https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/281278.pdf

The strike was launched over several demands including salary increments. The token strike has severely affected office trains and the Railway Control Room have warned about possible delays of office trains due to the strike.

President of Railway Technical Services Trade Union Committee Sampath Rajitha said that the strike will continue until tomorrow (31). They have further mentioned that they receive the support of 12,000 railway workers. Railway Additional General manager Wijaya Samarasainghe said casual, contractual and temporary workers must report for work immediately.

In the meantime, three trains have been reported out of order yesterday and the Railway Department said that they will carry out investigations to verify whether they have been sabotaged. However, Railway Technical Services Trade Union Committee refused accusations.

Several postal trains scheduled to start from Fort Railway Station have been delayed due to technical issues with train cables. However, it has been solved later.

As well as The Railway Department has registered a complaint with the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) that the railway workers on strike have caused damages train engines and compartments, Additional General Manager (Operations) Vijaya Samarasinghe said.

Mr. Deshapriya says that the Opposition representatives will be invited to discuss the talks that will be held in the Election Commission to discuss the forthcoming provincial council election.

He  points out that the problems of the election system have come to an end due to the problems in the election system since the Sabaragamuwa, North Central and Eastern provincial councils have come to an end. Accordingly, elections to the North, North Western and Central Provincial Councils will lapse by the end of this year, while the term of office of three Provincial Councils is due to lapse next year.

Ashika Brahmana

Pad Man’s Tale

Arunachalam Muruganathan who lived in Koimbathur in Chennai became ‘the Pad Man’ by introducing an inexpensive sanitary napkin. “One day I saw that my wife was trying to hide few pieces of dirty, bloodstained cloths from me” – he said. That’s when he understood that his wife’s menstrual management was unhygienic. Not only his wife, as he found, 80% of women in India have no access to standardized sanitary napkins.

In the beginning, Arunachalam Muruganathan wanted to give cotton sanitary napkins to his wife and discuss its advantages and disadvantages. But in order to do that, he has to wait a whole month for his wife’s monthly periods. He therefore searched for alternatives. He invited female medical students to voluntarily take part in his experiments, and when it wasn’t adequate, he used a womb-shaped pouch filled with animal blood to test the napkins he created. He used to ride a bicycle to work on a daily basis and he even tried wearing cotton sanitary napkins by himsself. Muruga’s wife, who thought his experiments are some kind of a mental illness or a result of a demonic possession, left him and demanded divorce. Once his mother came to his house to help him with housework and sees him when he was examining blood-stained sanitary napkins. She first thought Muruga is getting ready to cook chicken. But when she found out what he was actually doing, she felt a disgust and a distrust about her son. She immediately left the house.

In the midst of these kinds of obstacles, Muruga finally creates an inexpensive sanitary napkin and a machine to manufacture them for hundreds of thousands of women who are experiencing consequences of period poverty like his wife. He finds cheapest and most appropriate raw materials. Thereafter, Muruga aka Pad Man, builds a napkin-making machine only for 950 US dollars, but imported machines were sold at 500,000 US dollars. Eventually Muruga’s napkin-making machine became famous. It helped lessen rural poverty and boost rural economy. So far approximately 1500 of Muruga’s machines have been sold in India. To some rural women, it was not just a napkin-making machine; it was a way of becoming self-employed. In 2014, Times magazine included Arunachalam Muruganathan in the list of 100 most influential persons in the world.

Pad Man, a movie based on the book ‘The Sanitary Man of Sacred Land’ written by Twinkle Khanna, depicts how Muruga aka Pad Man fought period poverty and rural poverty. This movie commenced worldwide screening in February 2018, featuring Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor and Radika Apthege. With a production budget of 200 million Indian rupees it was ended up with 1200 million Indian rupees.

In India, one in every 5 girls does not attend school during menstruation. 80% of rural women in India suffer from rural poverty. They at least have proper statistics but here in Sri Lanka..?

The point even Pad Man missed

Although various programs on reproductive health are carried out, they very rarely go beyond that point to address period poverty or menstrual management.

Poverty in Sri Lanka will reach 8.9% by 2010. 9 out of 10 poor persons live in rural areas or plantation areas. That’s all official data available. Sri Lanka still does not have data about the number of students not attending during menstruation or the number of female students who stop schooling after puberty. Nelum Yaya Foundation for the first time in Sri Lanka introduced an eco-friendly, reusable sanitary napkin and conducted awareness raising program to eradicate period poverty. When they brought forward period poverty as a completely new topic in last March, they faced with the challenge of collecting ground-level data. They extensively discussed social restraints with regard to menstruation and gender.

“The place period poverty has in Sri Lanka is unsatisfactory. Although we discuss various aspects related to rural poverty, we do not discuss period poverty. Recently Nelum Yaya Foundation initiated a discourse on period poverty. Ways of finding answers to this issue vary from area to area. Sometimes women think that it is a result of being a biological woman. But I see a socio-psychological aspect in this. We discuss how the society view and deal with menstruation and how women deal with it all their lives. Most women in Sri Lanka still use improvised, unhygienic sanitary methods and hide it from male members of their families.” said Thushara Manoj, a lecturer and a sociologist who render his service to Nelumyaya Foundation’s ‘Girls Go Green’ program.

When it comes to sanitary napkins, the first thing we think about is commercial sanitary napkins. But Nelum Yaya Foundation has met, through pilot projects on period poverty in districts such as Killinochchi, girls who have never even seen a commercial sanitary pad in their life. That is the harsh reality. What do they use? There is no difference between them and Muruga’s wife Shanthi. They don’t do anything more than covering their blood with a dirty piece of cloth.

“Eradicating period poverty does not mean rural poverty is over. But in order to eradicate rural poverty, we have to eradicate period poverty as well. We therefore recognize period poverty as a key component of rural poverty and a concern which needs to be addressed.” said Radika Gunaratne who manages Girls Go Green program for Sri Lanka. “On the other hand, even in developed countries such as England, there are girls who refrain from attending school during menstruation due to not having sanitary napkins. “Not only in rural areas, we can see this situation in cities as well.” she further said.

Recently Scotland became the first country in the world to eradicate period poverty by giving sanitary napkins for free. But, what happens to used sanitary napkins? They will be piled up somewhere on this earth. Even Pad Man does the same. Muruga introduces an inexpensive sanitary pad to Indian women. They are mainly made of cotton but they are not reusable. They are considered eco-friendly merely because they are biodegradable.

“Nelum Yaya Foundation expects to introduce a reusable sanitary pad, with no commercial advantages whatsoever. Our intention is to help rural women to manufacture sanitary napkins they need and make it a way of generating income. The most important factor is that these eco-friendly sanitary napkins are reusable. A woman usually spends 30 years of her life with menstruation and uses approximately 9000 sanitary napkins during her lifetime. It turns into huge amount of garbage when a whole village, city or a country discard sanitary napkins. Non-biodegradable waste is still a solution less problem to our country. Women who use sanitary napkins almost never think about the damage they do to environment. When we teach them about it, they are surprised and sometimes worried about what they are doing.” Radika Gunaratna said. “What we want to do is, to introduce an inexpensive, skin friendly, reusable and eco-friendly alternative to commercial sanitary napkins.”

In the movie Pad Man, Muruga eventually stops on a mountain of discarded sanitary napkins. In other words, it’s a mountain of garbage. But Nelum Yaya Foundation attempts to go beyond that point by introducing alternative solutions instead of mere educational or awareness raising programs.

- Deepaka Wijesurendra

'Girls Go Green' with Nelum Yaya to Eliminate 'Period Poverty' in Sri Lanka

Nelum Yaya to Anuradhapura with 'Girls Go Green

According to prosecutors, the shooting had occurred in the late morning near a café located in Liège’s city centre. 

It has been reported that the man shot the police officers with their own weapon, after following and attacking them with a knife. 

The attacker also shot dead a 22-year old man, who was sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car. 

Armed police then swiftly arrived at the scene and shot the attacker dead. It has been reported that the man shot fire at these police before he was killed and managed to injure a number of the them “around their legs”. 

Belgian media has revealed that the man was a prisoner and had been granted temporary release just on Monday. It is believed that he may have been radicalised during his time in jail. 

This incident is being treated as terrorism, as local media heard the attacker shout “"Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest" in Arabic). However, the exact motive behind the incident has not yet been verified. 

Belgian’s Interior Minister Jan Jambon commented on the event, saying:
“Our thoughts are with the victims of this horrible act. We are in the process of establishing an overview of exactly what happened."

The tragic news had been confirmed by Roth’s literary agent, Andrew Wylie, who announced that the author died on Tuesday night as a result of congestive heart failure. 

Roth himself has had a mass amount of success as an author; having won awards from The Pulitzer, The National Book Award and The Man Booker International Prize of 2011. 

He is the author of 25 books and some of his influential titles include American Pastoral, The Human Stain and I Married a Communist. 

The origins of Roth’s career began in 1950s, where he published a collection of short stories called Goodbye Columbus. In these stories; issues of class, identity and borders were addressed from a Jewish perspective. 

The publishing of these stories attracted a fair amount of controversy; with Roth’s opposers labelling him as an anti-Semitic and a “self-hating Jew” as Roth himself was Jewish. 

Roth’s career very much strengthened after the 1950s, where he continued to publish admirable novels. The author himself said that he got his inspiration from the cultural values of Jewish family life, sex and the American ideals that were prevalent in his time. 

In this rare exclusive interview, Roth opens up about his life and his legacy. 

Roth has had a number of health conditions in the past, both physically and mentally. The author survived a burst appendix in the late 1960s and battled a near-suicidal depression in 1987. As well as this, Roth had again battled with severe depression in 1993 and this is thought to have been due to the negative reaction that he got from the publishing of his novel, Operation Shylock. 
 
In 2009, Roth chose to end his fictional career. Nonetheless, he was still being known as a celebrity-like figure in America. In 2011, Roth was awarded the National Humanities Medal by former US president, Barack Obama.

The pair are identified as Mike McCormick (right) and Aaron Smeltzer (left) from American news outlet WYFF. Mr McCormick was a news anchor and Mr Smeltzer was a photojournalist. 

The two have died as a result of a falling tree hitting their vehicle as they were driving down a highway. It has been concluded that the heavy rainfall must have waterlogged the tree’s soil; and this consequently caused the tree to plummet to the ground. 
 
The death of the two journalists happened just minutes after they had interviewed Fire chief Geoff Tennant regarding the storm. 
 
Mr Tennant declared that the death of the pair has “personally affected” him and that he feels “a sense of responsibility” for what has happened. 
"It is one of those things you know is going to happen, or you can predict it may happen - you don't know when," said Mr Tennant. 
 
WYFF, the occupational home of the Mr McCormick and Mr Smeltzer, has paid tribute to both men in their programme. Reporting on WYFF 4’s evening news, news anchor Carol Goldsmith said: 

"Our news family grieves over the loss of two special journalists - and two special friends,"
 
Moreover, anchors from another local news station WSPA 7 have expressed their condolences. 

"The journalists who died in today's crash were friends to many of us”, said the anchors. 

"They were committed to their work, to this community, and while we are of course competitors on air, Mike and Aaron were our friends and they were part of our larger journalism family.” 

What is Storm Alberto? 

Storm Alberto has been named the first Atlantic storm of 2018 and has manifested days before the start of the American hurricane season (June 1st). 

According to the US National Hurricane Centre, Alberto has currently weakened to a subtropical depression, with sustained heavy rainfall and maximum winds of 35 miles per hour. 

It is expected to move into the Tennessee Valley, located in south-eastern area of the United States, on Tuesday and Wednesday.