Tamil rebels holed up in ever-diminishing territory in northern Sri Lanka forcibly recruited children to take part in final defences against government troops, according to a former senior official. Some of the youngsters were sent to fight with just one day's basic training. A number of civilians who tried to escape to the government side were shot.

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in a set-back for Sri Lanka's ruling party, the Tamil National Alliance has won a landslide victory in local elections, capturing 20 out of 25 seats it contested in areas formerly held by rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

On Tuesday 14 June, a shocking, heart-wrenching documentary was shown on Channel 4. ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’, broadcast just after 11pm, displayed what presenter Jon Snow described as “devastating evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and a powerful case for bring those guilty of these crimes to justice.”

A cricket official in charge of the MA Chidambaram stadium in Chennai has described yesterday's wall collapse at the World Cup venue as a "minor" incident.

Chennai Super Kings were crowned Champions League Twenty20 winners last night after outplaying the Warriors in Johannesburg on their way to an eight-wicket victory.

Sri Lanka's investigation into the war against the Tamil Tigers – a conflict that left thousands of civilians dead – has begun amid a barrage of allegations that justice will not be done.

The simmering tension surrounding the Indian Premier League's off-field affairs boiled over last night when Lalit Modi, the chairman and driving force behind the league's birth and frantic development, was suspended after being accused of an array of financial wrong doings, including money laundering and bribery.

In any update of Dante's Inferno, there would be a circle of hell for those global fat-cats who clean up by creating credit hell for the rest of us – having first deluded the hoi polloi that those needless little luxuries were well within their means. Here, uber-wheeler-dealers would be trapped forever in the joyless, high-anxiety task of manning the phones in an Indian call centre owned by a US company determined to claw back the debts of Americans whom they had a vested interest in reducing to beggary in the first place.

An acrimonious election campaign and a disputed result provides an ominous start for what was meant to be a new era for Sri Lanka, after more than a quarter century of civil war. A country of rich potential had – indeed it still has – the opportunity to make a new beginning, following the conclusive defeat of the Tamil Tiger separatists in 2009. But the vote has underlined the deep and persisting divisions between the minority Tamils and the Sinhalese majority.

On the eve of Sri Lanka's hard-fought presidential election, the two main candidates have let fly a further volley of accusations and counter-allegations, with each side claiming the other is planning illegal, unconstitutional moves to seize power.