Nearly 100 elephants, dancers and torchbearers walked down the streets of this central city decorated with colourful lights and flags as the annual Buddhist festival of Kandy Perahera was celebrated with great enthusiasm last weekend. Kandy Perahera is celebrated annually ever since the sacred tooth relic of Buddha was brought to Sri Lanka during the reign of King Kirthi Sri Meghavanna during 300 A.D. Similar festivals take place in other parts of the country, including capital Colombo, but on a smaller scale. According to organizers, over 3,000 police personnel and hundreds of military personnel, were on guard to ensure that the event remained trouble-free.

A compilation of writings of some of India’s best known authors like Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, Vikram Seth, Shobhaa De and Sunil Ganguly — "AIDS sutra: Untold Stories from India" — was released last week to highlight the rarely heard stories of those affected with the fatal disease. Avahan, the AIDS Initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has brought out the books in its fight against AIDS/HIV virus. The writers have uncovered different aspects of the disease and its effects in India. Rushdie has written on the eunuch community in Mumbai while Desai worked with the sex workers on East Godavari. Shobhaa De has written about her driver.

A married woman’s face was blackened, shoes hung around her neck and then paraded through her village in Himachal Pradesh as she had deserted her husband to live with another man, local police said. A few months ago, Veena deserted her husband and started living with Ajit Kumar. After Kumar’s death, she came back to her husband’s house at Matt village. When villagers came to know about her arrival, they got agitated. They allegedly thrashed her in full public view.

Three people have been arrested for allegedly pirating newly-released Hindi movies, police said. Equipment like a projector, a sound recorder/mixer, a computer, a handycam, a mega-amplifier and DVDs of movies like The Mummy, Ugly aur Pagli and Singh is Kinng were recovered from the hotel room, rented by the suspects.

Hundreds of people have been marooned in four villages along Bangladesh’s northeastern border with India following landslides caused by excessive rainfall in the hills of Meghalaya. Torrential rains have wreaked havoc in Kalapahar hills, sending sand and rocks across the border into villages near Tahirpur in Sylhet district of northeastern Bangladesh. More than 600 people have been marooned since July 23 in the most affected villages of Chandpur, Noyachhara and Rajaniline.

A United Nations internal investigation found that peacekeepers from India engaged in sexual exploitation and abuses when they were posted in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN said. The government of India had assured the UN that charges against their nationals will be promptly investigated, and if proven, legal measures will be taken against the individuals.

Four people were arrested from the Indira Gandhi International Airport when they were trying to flee to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on fake visas. Delhi Police also arrested the suspected mastermind of the racket, Varnam Singh, who allegedly arranged for fake visas from his Chittaranjan Park residence. A police team went to arrest Singh, he tried to offer them a bribe of about $20,000. Police believe that Singh had issued at least 50 such fake visas earlier.

It may sound unbelievable, but a vintage one rupee coin fetched about $7,000 at a numismatic auction in India’s IT hub on the country’s sixty-second Independence Day. The proud owner of the rare coin, minted in 1960, outbid stiff competition from two other rivals to pocket the prized possession. The coin was minted at Bombay Mint in 1960. But it never got the approval of senior officers for circulation. A 25 cent gold coin from the British era with Queen Victoria’s etching also garnered great interest among numismatists. It was auctioned for a whopping $3,933.