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Many obstacles and stumbling blocks remain in the way of health care reform. The House and Senate bills will have to be merged, and then the House and Senate both will vote on the final bill. We don’t yet know what will be in the final bill, or if the final bill will be passed into law. Passage will be especially difficult in the Senate, where it will need 60 votes to pass. It is still possible that after all this angst, just one grandstanding senator could kill the whole thing.

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Indian students in Australia have vowed to fight back against a series of callous attacks they have blamed on racists.

Furious demonstrators have rallied in Sydney and Melbourne, where dozens of assaults have been reported in the past year.

"People got stabbed in their houses, on train stations, on the street and there were petrol bombs thrown on people's cars," said Gautam Gupta, the founder of the Federation of Indian Students of Australia. He accused the authorities of being "too slow" to respond to the violence.

But Bogollagama said the campaign to crush the rebels was a model for others to follow.

"Sri Lanka will, no doubt, enter the annals of history as a classic textbook example of a nation that successfully prevailed over the scourge of terrorism, whilst tenaciously upholding the cherished values of democracy and human rights that have been deeply engraved in the psyche of our people," he said.

More than 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final throes of the Sri Lankan civil war, most as a result of government shelling, an investigation by The Times has revealed.

The number of casualties is three times the official figure.

The Sri Lankan authorities have insisted that their forces stopped using heavy weapons on April 27 and observed the no-fire zone where 100,000 Tamil men, women and children were sheltering. They have blamed all civilian casualties on Tamil Tiger rebels concealed among the civilians.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has offered support to Sri Lanka's humanitarian efforts as it recovers from its war with Tamil Tiger rebels.

However, the emergency session resolution did not mention granting UN aid agencies full access to the 300,000 displaced people in army-run camps.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has evacuated 14,000 sick and wounded people and their families from the Sri Lankan war zone since February, said it still did not have full access to its military-run camps for displaced people.

ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger cited huge needs for aid and medical care for those sheltering in facilities such Manik Farm, which holds about 210,000 people.

It is "still not clear" whether Sri Lanka will allow aid workers to reach people needy help, Kellenberger said. "We are in discussions with them," he told a news conference in Geneva.

Even after declaring victory in Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, the country’s leaders seem unable to distinguish between the enemy — the brutal but apparently vanquished Tamil Tiger separatists — and innocent bystanders. Despite appeals from Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, and from others, the government has not given international aid organizations full access to government-run camps, where an estimated 280,000 civilians are said to be in desperate need of food, water and medical care.

Sri Lankan players who signed up to the unofficial Indian Cricket League (ICL) will be considered for international selection if they sever ties with the rebel organisation, the country's cricket board said.

Apart from all the above, there are some difficult problems reporting Sri Lanka.

Lots of the worst things that happen go on well away from the eyes of independent journalists.

In these circumstances, when we can't be sure for ourselves who has done what, all we can do is report what people say has happened.

In Sri Lanka that often means this: A group of people are killed, quite possibly civilians. The government and the Tigers accuse each other of the killings.

To complicate matters further, "shadowy paramilitary groups" may have been involved.

Aid agencies have warned that a lack of sanitation and adequate medicine was allowing disease like hepatitis to spread.

Indeed, many of the inmates interviewed at Manik Farm said their children were suffering from diarrhea and other illnesses that stem from tainted water. One woman held up her baby who she said had diarrhea for three days. When she took him to the camp clinic the doctor said the child was fine and sent her away, she said.

The Sri Lankan government said Tuesday that the Prevention of Terrorism Act and State of Emergency will be continued in the island for some time despite the conclusion of civil war.

Nimal Siripala de Silva, majority leader of the House told parliament that though terrorism has been completely wiped out, terrorist activists are still at large prowling every corner of the country.