June 11, 2025 · 2:36 am

Democracy At Peril? A Forum …. to Dine On

Factum EPIGS Summit, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 11–12 June 2025**

Join us at EPIGS’25 for this panel discussion featuring journalists, civic tech leaders, and election experts from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Pakistan, and the Maldives as they unpack evolving electoral narratives and explore challenges to platform integrity across Asia. Hear regional insights, real-world experiences, and ideas for safeguarding democracy in the digital age.

 

THE PANELISTS
o Rohana Hettiarachchi (Sri Lanka) – Executive Director of People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL)
o Che De Los Reyes (The Philippines) – Journalist and Media Development Specialist
o Aishath Adnan (The Maldives) – Co-Founder of Women in Tech Maldives
o Harindra Dassanayake (Sri Lanka) Co-Founder of Muragala
o Dulanjaya Mahagamage (Sri Lanka) – Manager – Social Media and Research at Hashtag Generation
o Usama Khilji (Pakistan) – Co-Founder and Director of Bolo Bhi and the Vice Chair of the Global Network Initiative
• Moderator – Rajni Gamage (Sri Lanka) – Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore (NUS).

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June 10, 2025 · 12:32 am

Safeguarding the Ocean’s Resources …. a NICE Gathering

Saroj Pathirana in FACEBOOK, June 2025

A large group of top-level leaders, ministers, princes, and top-level leaders have gathered in France’s port Nice (Nice) to attend the United Nations Third World Ocean Conference.

As several leaders approached Nice city by ship, a massive ship from the Greenpeace Environmental Organization named Arctic Sunrise  was also approaching the city to protest against cannings happening at the bottom.

Samoa State, which made the first announcement to start the conference, announced 9 new sea regions fully insured, protecting 30% of its own seaside. Accordingly, fishing of 36,000 square kilometers is strictly prohibited. And the Samoa Island State’s warning is to fully start its ocean zone into a sustainable management system by 2030.

We will bring further details about this week-long conference, courtesy of Ocean Reporting Network at Pulitzer Centre.

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June 8, 2025 · 10:03 pm

Sri Lankan Cricket’s Baptism of Fire on The World Stage, 1975

Rex Clementine

Exactly 50 years ago to this day, Sri Lanka played their first ever international cricket match. It was the 1975 World Cup and it indeed was a baptism by fire; bowled out for 86 by West Indies.

Anura Tennekoon and Clive Lloyd at the toss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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June 8, 2025 · 9:30 pm

England beat Windies in First T20 in UK

Alan Gardner in ESPNcricinfo, June 2025

England 188 for 6 (Buttler 96) beat West Indies 167 for 9 (Lewis 39, Dawson 4-20) by 21 runs

Jos Buttler began life back in the ranks of England‘s T20I side by making his highest score on home soil, his supremely calculated innings of 96 from 59 providing a reassuring touch of quality to a new-look batting order. Liam Dawson then marked his return to England duty after more than two years out of the side with his best return in any format, figures of 4 for 20 putting the skids under West Indies in the chase.

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June 7, 2025 · 2:20 am

An American Outsider’s Appraisal of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict unto Death

 

Prefatory Note by Michael Roberts in Adelaide, 7 June 2025 

Brian Victoria was a colleague teaching Japanese in the Asian Studies Department when I moved to Adelaide Univerisity Anthropology in 1977; and we got to know each other at seminars and in faculty corridors. He moved abroad subsequently. While his expertise probably lies in political issues in the Pacific theatre, one of my brainwaves  — rare nowadays — led me to seek his appraisal of the deadly, devastating and unholy conflicts occurring in recent years in Gaza, Palestine, Israel,and their surrounds (an issue piercing TPS because of a sharp division of opinion between two of my friends, David Schokman and Arlen van Der Wall).

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June 6, 2025 · 7:42 pm

LATE NIGHT LIVE’s Searching Stories

A Note from Errol Fernando, early June 2025 **

Dear Michael,  I listened to a very interesting interview on Late Night Live recently which dealt with the whole story of Merle Oberon and her genealogy. Please google Late Night Live and listen to this interview which tells you about her Sri Lankan mother, her efforts to hide her ethnicity, pretending that she was born in Tasmania, etc, etc.

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June 6, 2025 · 2:15 pm

Merle Oberon: The Full Montage ….

The Wikipedia Disclosures …. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Oberon

Merle Oberon with Laurence Olivier in  in Wuthering Heights (1939)

 

Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson; 19 February 1911 – 23 November 1979) was a British actress. She began her acting career in British cinema in the early 1930s, with a breakout role in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). She later moved to Hollywood, where she became an international star, earning acclaim for films such as The Dark Angel (1935), Wuthering Heights (1939), and That Uncertain Feeling (1941). Her career spanned from the 1920s to the 1970s, primarily in English-language films produced in the UK and the U.S. Her performance as Kitty Vane in The Dark Angel earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

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June 6, 2025 · 1:59 pm

Merle Oberon’s Burgher Genealogical Lineage …

An Item passed on by Jayantha Somasundaram of Canberra, June 2025 … with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

 Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson; 19 February 1911 – 23 November 1979) was raised as the daughter of Arthur Terrence O’Brien Thompson, a Welsh mechanical engineer from Darlington who worked in Indian Railways, and his wife, Charlotte Selby (whose full name was Constance Charlotte Thompson, according to her 1937 obituary), who was born in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and was a Burgher from British Ceylon.

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June 5, 2025 · 9:48 pm

For Humankind: Jaffna’s Medics in Eternal Service

Abbi Kanthasamy, … an item circulated by Charles Schokman of Australia, early June 2025, with this title “A Beacon Amidst the Bleeding: What Jaffna’s Doctors Taught Me About Life”

I’ve spent most of my adult life building things. Businesses, brands,
homes, arguments. Always chasing—the next goal, the next deal, the
next piece of validation in a world that measures worth by margins and
milestones. But this past week, watching my mother fight for her life in a small hospital in northern Sri Lanka, I was reminded of something I had forgotten: not all heroes chase.
  … Dr Samuel Fiske Green

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June 5, 2025 · 1:52 am

Humankind’s Shared Humanity as Touchstone for The Future

Harvard 2025 Graduation Speech: Chinese Student Yurong Jiang on Humanity and Shared Future ….  https://youtu.be/6hoIEBv486E …

30 May 2025 …. At Harvard University’s 2025 graduation ceremony, Chinese graduate Yurong Jiang [delivered] a powerful message on global unity. Emphasizing that “humanity is a community with a shared future,” she reminds us that even those labeled as enemies are still human beings. Her words call for empathy, understanding, and a rethinking of division in our world.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES – APRIL 22: Views of Harvard University, an Ivy League University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. Harvard University sued the Trump administration on Monday after the federal government said it was freezing $2.2 billion in grants and sought what university officials described as ‘unprecedented and improper’ control over the Ivy League institution. ‘The consequences of the government’s overreach will be severe and long-lasting,’ Harvard President Alan Garber said in a message Monday announcing the lawsuit. Last week, the Trump administration announced that it was freezing federal funding after the school refused to accept demands that the administration has said aim to address antisemitism on campus. Among the government’s demands were an audit of student body views and a ban on international students who are “hostile to the American values and institutions.” In Monday’s suit, the university argued that the funding freeze is not related to the administration’s antisemitism concerns. (Photo by Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)

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