This is what I read in a leading news magazine: “On Sunday, 10 July, the News of the World, a 168-year-old British newspaper, published its 8,674th and last edition. To its seven million-plus readers, the paper admitted it had lost its way, an uncharacteristic understatement for a tabloid famous for its love of the lurid. The end was sudden and singularly graceless, the paper collapsing under mounting proof of the unsavoury and illeagal extremes to which it went to gather salacious gossip on which it thrived, on which, indeed, it became what some maintain was the most widely read newspaper in the English language. For years News of the World, had been hacking into mobile phones, stealing pin codes that enabled it to listen to the voice mail of people central to the paper’s piquant mix of sex, celebrity, sport, royals and crime. The tabloid hacked into the phone of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old schoolgirl who was kidnapped and murdered nine years ago. News of the World had not only listened to the messages on her phone but deleted some when her inbox was full so that the new messages could be left that their journalists could listen in on. The covert interference (falsely) gave hope to the Dowler family, who naturally assumed it was Milly deleting the messages. Her body was discovered months later” ( From the article, “Old and Best Dead, “ by Shougat Dasgupta, Open, 25 July, 2011, page 30-31).

Duke Jeyaraj on the Sangakarra Cowdrey Lecture 2011

"I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am today, and always, proudly Sri Lankan."

The Hyderabad Times, quoted actress Kajal Agrawal saying this the other day: "What the hell is happening?" (That was the article's headline in bold letters as well). This was her first reaction to certain reports which quoted her saying that "I have not seen myself as a South Indian actress. I am a Punjabi girl!" (Hyderabad Times, 24 June 2011). The words, "What the hell....", "Who the hell...", "How the hell..." have become so common in our present-day English language use - as common as 'and' and 'well'! When people use the word 'hell' this frequently and so casually they don't even remotely understand the horrific place hell is.