Prime Minister(PM) Harini Amarasuriya stated the education system must be transformed to develop quality human resources and meet the demands of the modern world. The PM made the remarks at the ‘EDCS Sisu Nena Pranama’ scholarship ceremony at Temple Trees on 31 January, where 2,292 students entering state universities received scholarships worth over Rs. 13.7 million. She noted the program recognises the efforts of students and parents and highlighted the need for students to become active participants in national development. The Education Co-operative Society, established in 1930, now has around 215,000 members, making it the largest cooperative society in South Asia.

PM urges education reform to meet modern world needs

India’s federal government will spend a record 12.2 trillion rupees ($133.08 billion) on infrastructure in the upcoming financial year that begins on April 1, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said during her annual budget presentation on Sunday. The spending plan is higher than the 11.21 trillion rupees budgeted for the current fiscal year, which was the highest on record. Source: Reuters&nbsp;

India raises infrastructure spending to record 12.2 trillion rupees for 2026-27

The State of Public Emergency in Sri Lanka has been extended from January 28, according to an extraordinary gazette signed by the Secretary to the President. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake issued the proclamation under the Public Security Ordinance, bringing Part II of the Ordinance into effect nationwide. The gazette noted the extension is aimed at ensuring public safety and maintaining essential services. The President also introduced amended regulations titled the Emergency (Miscellaneous Provisions and Powers) Regulations No. 1 of 2026.

State of Public Emergency extended in Sri Lanka

The Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) stated it will intensify its ongoing trade union action from Monday(02). The decision followed what the association noted as an inadequate response from the Ministry of Health to its demands. An emergency Executive Committee meeting on 31 January confirmed the move. From 8.00 a.m. on 2 February, doctors will stop issuing external prescriptions and laboratory recommendations, withdraw from political health camps, and avoid staffing new wards without approved doctors. Specialists will limit services to their attached hospitals only, and will not examine patients where facilities or support staff are inadequate.

GMOA to intensify strike from Monday

Armed extremists in northeastern Nigeria killed dozens of people earlier this week in separate attacks targeting a construction site and a military installation, security officials said Saturday. Gunmen killed at least 25 construction workers during an ambush on Thursday in the town of Sabon Gari in Borno State, a senior officer of the Borno State Police Command told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. Authorities in Nigeria often decline to publicly confirm death tolls in attacks, citing security concerns. “It is a devastating loss, and the hallmarks point directly to Boko Haram insurgents who have long resisted developmental projects in these areas,” the police official said. Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadis, took up arms in 2009 to fight Western education and impose their radical version of Islamic law. The insurgency now includes an offshoot of the Islamic State group known as the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP. It has spilled into Nigeria’s northern neighbors, including Niger, killing about 35,000 civilians and displacing more than 2 million people, according to the United Nations. Abdurrahman Buni, a senior officer of the Civilian Joint Task Force, a volunteer vigilante group helping the military fight extremist groups and armed gangs, confirmed that at least 25 construction workers were killed during the Thursday attack. Buni and the police officer said extremist fighters, backed by armed drones, had raided an army base in a separate attack in the same town hours earlier. The police officer said the dead were nine soldiers and two members of a civilian task force, while about 16 injured security personnel were evacuated for medical treatment following the heavy gunfire. He said it was unclear if the base attack was carried out by Boko Haram or the rival ISWAP, both of which are active in the region. Nigeria is in the grip of a complex security crisis, with an insurgency by Islamic militants in the northeast alongside a surge in kidnappings for ransom by gunmen across the northwest and north-central regions over the recent months,Last month, the U.S. launched airstrikes in northern Nigeria, targeting Islamic State fighters, after allegations that the West African country failed to rein in attacks on Christians. Source: AP

Armed extremists kill dozens in northeastern Nigeria

Navy expands clean water mission with new RO plant

An ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has proposed a bill to ban social media for children, as the world’s biggest market for Meta and YouTube joins a global debate on the impact of social media on young people’s health and safety. “Not only are our children becoming addicted to social media, but India is also one of the world’s largest producers of data for foreign platforms,” lawmaker L.S.K. Devarayalu told Reuters on Friday. “Based on this data, these companies are creating advanced AI systems, effectively turning Indian users into unpaid data providers, while the strategic and economic benefits are reaped elsewhere,” he said. Australia last month became the first country to ban social media for children under 16, blocking access in a move welcomed by many parents and child advocates but criticised by major technology companies and free-speech advocates. France’s National Assembly this week backed legislation to ban children under 15 from social media, while Britain, Denmark and Greece are studying the issue. Facebook operator Meta, YouTube-parent Alphabet&nbsp;and X did not respond on Saturday to emails seeking comment on the Indian legislation. Meta has said it backs laws for parental oversight but that “governments considering bans should be careful not to push teens toward less safe, unregulated sites.” India’s IT ministry did not respond to a request for comment. India, the world’s second-biggest smartphone market with 750 million devices and a billion internet users, is a key growth market for social media apps and does not set a minimum age for access. Devarayalu’s 15-page Social Media (Age Restrictions and Online Safety) Bill, which is not public but was seen by Reuters, says no one under 16 “shall be permitted to create, maintain, or hold” a social media account and those found to have one should have them disabled. “We are asking that the entire onus of ensuring users’ age be placed on the social media platforms,” Devarayalu said. The government’s chief economic adviser attracted attention on Thursday by saying India should draft policies on age-based access limits to tackle “digital addiction”. Devarayalu’s legislation is a private member’s bill - not proposed to parliament by a federal minister - but such bills often trigger debates in parliament and influence lawmaking. He is from the Telugu Desam Party, which governs the southern state Andhra Pradesh and is vital to Modi’s coalition government. Source: Reuters

Modi ally proposes social media ban for India’s teens as global debate grows

Long crowned by his legion of fans as the king of Afrobeat, the late Fela Kuti is finally being recognised by the global music industry. The Nigerian star will posthumously receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys - almost three decades after his death at the age of 58. “Fela has been in the hearts of the people for such a long time. Now the Grammys have acknowledged it, and it’s a double victory,” his musician son Seun Kuti tells the BBC. “It’s bringing balance to a Fela story,” he adds. Rikki Stein, a long-time friend and manager of the late musician, says the recognition by the Grammys is “better late than never”. “Africa hasn’t in the past rated very highly in their interests. I think that’s changing quite a bit of late,” Stein tells the BBC. Following the global success of Afrobeats, a genre inspired by Fela’s sound, the Grammys introduced the category of Best African Performance in 2024. This year, Nigerian superstar Burna Boy also has a nomination in the Best Global Music Album category. But Fela Kuti will be the first African to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, albeit posthumously. The award was first presented in 1963 to American singer and actor Bing Crosby. Other musicians who will receive the award this year include Mexican-American guitarist Carlos Santana, Chaka Khan, the American singer known as the Queen of Funk, and Paul Simon. Fela Kuti’s family, as well friends and colleagues, will be attending the Grammys to receive his award. “The global human tapestry needs this, not just because it’s my father,” Seun Kuti tells the BBC. Stein says it is important to recognise Fela as a man who championed the cause of people who had “drawn life’s short straw”, adding that he “castigated any form of social injustice, corruption [and] mismanagement” in government. ignore that aspect of Fela’s legacy,” he tells the BBC. For Fela Anikulapo Kuti was not simply a musician, but also a cultural theorist, political agitator and the undisputed architect of Afrobeat - which is distinct from, but ultimately led to, the modern sound of Afrobeats. He pioneered the Afrobeat genre alongside drummer Tony Allen, blending West African rhythms, jazz, funk, highlife, extended improvisation, call-and-response vocals and politically charged lyricism. Across a career spanning roughly three decades until his death in 1997, Fela Kuti released more than 50 albums and built a body of work that fused music with ideology, rhythm with resistance, and performance with protest. His music incurred the wrath of Nigeria’s then-military regimes.In 1977, after the release of the album Zombie, which satirised government soldiers as obedient, brainless enforcers, his compound in the main city, Lagos, was raided. Known as Kalakuta Republic, the property was burned, residents were brutalised, and his mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, later died from injuries sustained during the assault. Rather than retreat, Fela Kuti responded through music and defiance. He took his mother’s coffin to government offices and released the song Coffin for Head of State, turning grief into protest. The musician’s ideology was a blend of pan-Africanism, anti-imperialism, and African-rooted socialism. Fela Kuti’s mother was hugely influential in his life, helping shape his political consciousness, while the US-born singer and activist Sandra Izsadore helped sharpen his revolutionary outlookHe was born Olufela Olusegun Oludoton Ransome-Kuti, but dropped Ransome because of its Western roots. In 1978, he married 27 women in a highly publicised ceremony, bringing together partners, performers, organisers and co-architects of the cultural and communal vision of Kalakuta Republic. Fela Kuti endured repeated arrests, beatings, censorship and surveillance by the security forces. Yet repression only amplified his influence.“He wasn’t doing what he was doing to win awards. He was interested in liberation. Freeing the mind,” Stein tells the BBC. “He was fearless. He was determined.” Fela Kuti’s musical evolution was shaped not only by Nigeria but also by Ghana. During the 1950s and 1960s, highlife music, pioneered by Ghanaian musicians such as ET Mensah, Ebo Taylor and Pat Thomas, became a defining sound across West Africa. Its melodic guitar lines, horn sections, dance rhythms, and cosmopolitan identity deeply influenced Fela Kuti’s early musical direction. He spent time in Ghana absorbing highlife’s structure, horn phrasing, and dance-oriented arrangements before fusing it with jazz, funk, the rhythms of his own Yoruba people, and political storytelling. The DNA of highlife can be heard in Afrobeat’s melodic sensibility and its balance between groove and sophistication. In this sense, Afrobeat is not only Nigerian. It is West African, pan-African, and diasporic in origin, carrying Ghana’s musical imprint at its foundation. On stage, Fela Kuti cut an unmistakable figure. Often bare-chested or draped in the wax-printed fabric popular across West Africa, hair shaped into a crisp Afro, saxophone in hand, eyes alert with intensity, he commanded a large band of more than 20 musicians. His performances at the Afrika Shrine in Lagos were legendary, part concert, part political rally, part spiritual ceremony. Stein recalls that performances at the Shrine were immersive rather than conventional. “When Fela played, nobody applauded,” he tells the BBC. “The audience wasn’t separate. They were part of it.” Music was not spectacle. It was communion. Fela Kuti’s visual identity was shaped in part by artist and designer Lemi Ghariokwu, who created 26 of his album covers between 1974 and 1993.“Fela has been an ancestor for 28 years. His legacy is growing by the day. This is immortality,” Ghariokwu tells the BBC, welcoming the posthumous award. Today, Fela Kuti’s music is still popular with millions around the world, and his influence is audible in modern artists such as Burna Boy, Kendrick Lamar and Sir Idris Elba. Elba is a huge fan - the award-winning actor and DJ has curated an official vinyl box set, Fela Kuti Box Set 6, and has publicly compared him to icons such as Sade and Frank Sinatra to illustrate the point that Fela Kuti has his own unique sound. Fela Kuti performed at major international festivals in Europe and North America, introducing global audiences to a bold and politically charged version of modern Africa. Seun Kuti was just 14 when his father died. “Fela never made me feel like I was a child,” he recalls. “He didn’t hide anything from me. He talked about everything openly.” There was no myth-building. “I didn’t even realise my dad was famous,” he says. “That’s credit to him. He kept me grounded.” What stayed with him most was not spectacle, but discipline, clarity and humanity. “The human part of him, leadership, musicianship, fatherhood, that was the epitome of who he was.” One of Seun Kuti’s most revealing reflections speaks to independence and identity. “Fela was our dad, but you didn’t own him. Fela belonged to himself. But we all belonged to him.” Fela Kuti insisted on being addressed by name, not by title, even by his children. Seun recalls having his pocket money docked after calling him “Pops”, a moment that carried a lesson in respect. “He always reminded us that he was in service to others more than himself.” That ethic shaped Seun’s evolution from youthful ambition toward cultural responsibility. “I used to make music to make money. But as I’ve grown, I lean more toward working for my people as well as my art.” Fela Kuti led multiple ensembles, most famously Africa 70 and later Egypt 80, the latter now carried forward by his son. These were not conventional backing bands. They were musical militias, trained in discipline, endurance, and ideological purpose. Stein recalls Fela Kuti’s obsessive attention to detail. “He tuned every instrument personally. Music wasn’t entertainment to him. It was his mission.” Source: BBC

Music legend Fela Kuti becomes first African to get Grammys Lifetime Achievement Award

Catherine O’Hara, the comedic actress best known for her starring roles in the Home Alone and Beetlejuice films, as well as her Emmy-winning turn in Schitt’s Creek, has died aged 71. The Canadian star rose to fame through Toronto’s Second City improvisation troupe and on SCTV, before making a name for herself in the US in 1988’s Beetlejuice and as the matriarch in the holiday classic Home Alone. O’Hara, whose colleagues remembered her as a “wonderful person, artist and collaborator”, who most recently appeared in the Emmy-winning comedy The Studio and HBO’s The Last of Us. In a statement to the BBC, O’Hara’s agent said she died on Friday at her home in Los Angeles following a brief illness. O’Hara made lightning strike twice in her career with indelible cinematic turns. In 1988’s spooky satire Beetlejuice, she played Delia Deetz who led her possessed dinner guests in an enthralling song and dance performance of Day-O (the Banana Boat song). Two years later, in Home Alone, her panicked scream of “Kevin!” as she realises her mischievous eight-year-old son had been left behind during their Christmas holiday became is among the most memorable moments from one of the most successful film comedies ever. Her young co-star Macaulay Culkin, now 45, paid tribute to his on-screen mother on Friday, sharing images of the two of them from the film and in later years: “Mama. I thought we had time. I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you. But I had so much more to say. I love you. I’ll see you later.” The Toronto-born actress got her foot in the door as a waitress at the Toronto Second City theatre franchise in the 1970s, before auditioning for a role with the famed acting troupe. She further developed her comedic chops after joining the cast of sketch comedy show Second City Television (SCTV) - one of the most successful Canadian TV programmes ever - alongside the likes of Eugene Levy and the late John Candy. She has credited her Canadian roots with helping develop her sense of humour. In 2020, she told Rolling Stone that growing up Canadian didn’t have the same sense of nationalism or patriotism that she saw in the US. “And that’s a good thing because it does make you look outside of yourself and be aware of the world and not take yourself seriously,” she said.“And I think Canadians have not only a sense of humour about others but also about themselves.” Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney joined Canadians and fans across the world in mourning O’Hara. “Over 5 decades of work, Catherine earned her place in the canon of Canadian comedy — from the iconic Toronto production of Godspell to SCTV to Schitt’s Creek,” he said. “Canada has lost a legend.” O’Hara also collaborated with Christopher Guest and co-writer Eugene Levy four times, including on the critically acclaimed mockumentary films Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration. Her role as character actress Marilyn Hack in For Your Consideration earned her the 2006 National Board of Review Award for supporting actress. In a statement to Variety, Guest said he was devastated and that “we have lost one of the comic giants of our age”. O’Hara had a late career surge thanks to the Canadian comedy series Schitt’s Creek that became one of the biggest hits of the Covid lockdown.The fish-out-of-water comedy show followed the wealthy Rose family as they abruptly lose their money and mansion, and are forced to move into a shabby motel in a deadbeat town they bought as a joke. O’Hara’s character Moira was a particular delight, with her wildly fluctuating accent, outlandish fashion sense, and brilliant one-liners, like “Never assume, Twyla, because when you assume, it makes an ass out of... both of us.” Upon winning the Emmy Award for actress in a comedy, O’Hara thanked her co-stars Eugene and Dan Levy for giving her the opportunity to play “a woman of a certain age - my age - who gets to fully be her ridiculous self”. She had continued working until very close to her death, playing a therapist in HBO’s sci-fi drama The Last of Us and an ousted movie executive in Seth Rogen’s The Studio just last year. In The Studio she played Patty Leigh, a studio boss replaced by Rogen’s character, who pursues more creative roles as a film producer and makes her way to the Golden Globes - a stage that O’Hara was no stranger to.She won a Golden Globe award for best actress in 2021 for her role in Schitt’s Creek and was nominated for her role in The Studio at this year’s awards. She is also nominated at the Actor Awards (formerly the Screen Actors Guild Awards), which take place in March, for her role as Patty. Rogen on Friday said that when he first met O’Hara, he told her she “was the funniest person I’d ever had the pleasure of watching on screen” and that Home Alone was the film that made him want to make movies. “Getting to work with her was a true honour,” he wrote on Instagram. “She was hysterical, kind, intuitive, generous… she made me want to make our show good enough to be worthy of her presence in it. This is just devastating. We’re all lucky we got to live in a world with her in it.” Film director Judd Apatow, replying to Rogen’s post, added: “Brilliant and kind. Riotously funny for fifty years. A really special person.” O’Hara is survived by her husband Bo Welch and sons Matthew and Luke, as well as her siblings Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O’Hara, Tom O’Hara, and Patricia Wallice. Source: BBC

PM urges education reform to meet modern world needs

India raises infrastructure spending to record 12.2 trillion rupees fo ...

India raises infrastructure sp ...

State of Public Emergency extended in Sri Lanka

State of Public Emergency exte ...

GMOA to intensify strike from Monday

GMOA to intensify strike from ...

Armed extremists kill dozens in northeastern Nigeria

Armed extremists kill dozens i ...

Navy expands clean water mission with new RO plant

Navy expands clean water missi ...

Modi ally proposes social media ban for India’s teens as global debate ...

Modi ally proposes social medi ...

Music legend Fela Kuti becomes first African to get Grammys Lifetime A ...

Music legend Fela Kuti becomes ...

Schitt’s Creek and Home Alone star Catherine O’Hara dies aged 71

Schitt’s Creek and Home Alone ...

India raises infrastructure spending to record 12.2 trillion rupees fo ...

India raises infrastructure sp ...

State of Public Emergency extended in Sri Lanka

State of Public Emergency exte ...

GMOA to intensify strike from Monday

GMOA to intensify strike from ...

Armed extremists kill dozens in northeastern Nigeria

Armed extremists kill dozens i ...

Navy expands clean water mission with new RO plant

Navy expands clean water missi ...

Modi ally proposes social media ban for India’s teens as global debate ...

Modi ally proposes social medi ...

Music legend Fela Kuti becomes first African to get Grammys Lifetime A ...

Music legend Fela Kuti becomes ...

Schitt’s Creek and Home Alone star Catherine O’Hara dies aged 71

Schitt’s Creek and Home Alone ...

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