KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka's Defence Ministry has refused to return a state-owned property in Kilinochchi that housed a press club before the end of the civil war and has been under military control since, telling journalists only that security concerns made its release impossible. The decision was conveyed in an Aug. 12 letter from the Presidential Secretariat to the Kilinochchi Media Forum, nearly three months after the organisation appealed directly to President Anura Kumara Dissanay

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Shortly before midnight on Tuesday, one of the most widely followed voices on weather in northern Sri Lanka posted an alert in Tamil that spread quickly across the peninsula. Prof. N. Piratheeparajah, a professor of geography at the University of Jaffna and dean of its Faculty of Arts, wrote that a closely watched Indian Ocean climate index had fallen unexpectedly, that a powerful El Niño was responsible, and that the rains the North depends on in October and November could