Angered by what he perceived as the systemic discrimination of the minority Tamils by successive Sri Lankan governments, 18-year-old Velupillai Prabhakaran, armed with just a revolver, set out in 1972 to right the perceived wrongs by forming a militant group. That group eventually morphed into the Tamil Tigers, who have engaged in a brutal 25-year insurgency for an independent Tamil state that has left more than 70,000 dead. Along the way, the group has been declared a terrorist organization in ...

Just so you know, Bart Ehrman says he's not the anti-Christ. He says he's not trying to destroy your faith. He's not trying to bash the Bible. And, though his mother no longer talks to him about religion, Ehrman says some of his best friends are Christian. Ehrman, a best-selling author and a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a biblical sleuth whose investigations make some people very angry. Like the fictional ...

The Pakistani government convened a meeting on Monday of nearly all of the country's political parties, in an effort to consolidate broad national support for its military operation to crush Taliban militants in Pakistan's northwestern Swat Valley. The leaders of 42 political parties were expected to attend the All Party Congress in Islamabad, the capital. In a separate move to pressure the Taliban, hundreds of Muslim clerics gathered in Islamabad on Sunday, to issue a unanimous declaration that denounced the ...

Indian stocks Monday overshot their upper limit after the resounding victory of pro-reform prime minister Manmohan Singh's Congress party, forcing trading to close for the day. The benchmark Sensex at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) surged 17.2 percent, or 2,099.21 points, after a two-hour halt. The gains forced markets to shut for the day. "This is the biggest one day rise we've seen," said Surjit Bhalla, chairman of Oxus Investments in New Delhi. "Even the most bullish (market ...

Famed Uruguayan author Mario Benedetti died at his home in Montevideo, Uruguay, on Sunday, his personal secretary, Ariel Silva, told CNN. Benedetti, 88, was battling intestinal problems and had been hospitalized earlier this month. A descendent of Italian immigrants, Benedetti authored such best-selling novels as "The Truce" and "Juan Angel's Birthday," as well as a collection of short stories and poems. The poet-turned-novelist became a part of a thriving era of Latin authors including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and ...

Rupert Murdoch's plan to put News Corporation websites behind a pay wall is "going to be like putting toothpaste back in the tube." That's according to Jack Matthews, chief executive officer at Fairfax Digital Media, the online arm of one of the News Corp.'s biggest rivals in Australia. "I don't know of too many industries where something has been given away for free for 10 or 15 years, and then suddenly charged for it," said Matthews, whose company publications include ...

The Sri Lankan military said Monday that they killed three top leaders of the Tamil Tigers and the son of the rebel group's founder. CNN was unable to confirm the account because of safety and access reasons. The deaths were the result of continuing armed encounters with the last remnants of the rebel group, who are now cornered in a small stretch of land in the country's north, according to the military. The offensive against the rebel group is in ...

President Obama has started arming for the possibility of a major Supreme Court nomination battle, pulling a longtime Democratic power player into the White House to help run the confirmation process, senior administration officials told CNN. Stephanie Cutter is leaving the Treasury Department, where she has served as one of Secretary Timothy Geithner's most senior advisers during the financial crisis, to be the point person for mobilizing public support for Obama's pick to replace retiring Justice David Souter, three senior ...

Christian Eshiett was a rambunctious pre-teen who spent a lot of time cavorting with his friends in southern Nigeria. He would skip school and run away from home for days, frustrating his grandfather, who oversaw the boy's care. "I beat him severely with canes until they broke, yet he never shed a tear," said Eshiett Nelson Eshiett, 76. "One day, I took a broom to hit him and he started crying. Then I knew he was possessed by demons. ... ...

Now that the bank stress tests are completed, is it time to plan another round? The government's bank exams, the results of which were released last Thursday, seem to have calmed the market and paved the way for the nation's largest financial firms to raise tens of billion of dollars. As a result, a number of academics and policy watchers are warming to the idea of making the stress tests permanent. They like the fact that the stress tests ...