A Sri Lankan teacher, Gethsie Shanmugam who counseled war widows and orphans to overcome their fears is among the six winners of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Awards, regarded as Asia’s version of the Nobel Prize.
According to the Associated Press the other recipients includde a Japanese historian who helped Cambodians preserve the Angkor temples, an Indonesian working for the return of large tracts of forest land to indigenous communities, a Singaporean who leads the cooking of 6,000 meals a day for the destitute, a Philippine theater group which stood up to a dictatorship and a Filipino who oversaw the opening of job-generating export processing zones.
The awards, named after Philippine president who died in a 1957 plane crash, are to be presented in Manila on Aug. 31.
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First Bishop of the Batticaloa Diocese, Retired Bishop Joseph Ponnaiya, passed away today at the age of 74, following a brief illness.
The NPP government has been at the wheel for almost 6 months now. The time to keep looking at the rear view mirror and living in the past is about over.
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