Crowds at Valvettithurai beach cheered as kites bearing motifs of the Tamil armed struggle took to the skies for the annual Thai Pongal kite festival on January 14.

Entries included a military tank which bore red and yellow flags, the colours of Tamil Eelam, a hybrid tank decorated with what appeared to be tiger stripes, and a boat named ‘Angayarkanni’ - a possible tribute to the LTTE’s first female Black Tiger.

Residents in Nedunkulam, Ariyali, Jaffna District on Friday forced the government's surveyor to stop measuring and leave as they protested vehemently against the decision to acquire 300 'parappu' units of land in the area. 

The surveyor's visit on Friday followed the government's issuing a notice of land acquisition, prompting residents to prepare for a protest. 

<p>The Sri Lankan government pledged this week to build 4750 houses within six months in the North-East.&nbsp;</p> <p>Speaking to the Daily Mirror, the secretary of the Ministry of National Policies, Economic Affairs, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, Northern Province Development, Vocational Training, Skills Development and Youth Affairs, V Sivagnanasothy, said "work was well under progress and that the houses would be out of bricks and mortar/cement sand block, traditional type houses in the conflict affected areas of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, under an owner-driven modality."</p>

Residents in Batticaloa on Saturday remembered the 13th anniversary of the murder of the Tamil journalist, Subramaniyam Sugirdharajan, who was shot dead in Trincomalee after exposing the Sri Lankan Special Task Force's killing of 5 Tamil students, known as the 'Trinco 5'.  

Sugirdharajan, who was a journalist at the Sudar Oli paper, had accompanied one of the father of the murdered students, Dr Manoharan to the mortuary and published photos showing the bodies with point-blank gunshot injuries, thereby disproving government claims that the students had been killed by a grenade explosion.

A British court has revoked the arrest warrant for a Sri Lankan brigadier who was found guilty of intentionally harassing Tamil protestors, pending a further hearing on February 1st to determine the status of his diplomatic immunity.

Brigadier Priyanka Fernando, a defence attaché at the Sri Lankan High Commission, made a throat-slitting gesture to Tamils protesting outside the high commission on Sri Lanka’s independence day last year.

Samples of bones found in the Mannar ‘Sathosa’ mass grave were handed over for carbon dating to an American analytics company in Florida on Friday.

The bone samples were handed to Beta Analytics by a team made up of Mannar judicial medical officer Chaminda Rajapaksa and Office of Missing Persons (OMP) commissioner Mirak Rakeem, as well as attorneys at law Ranitha Gnanarajah and V S Niranchan who were representing families of the disappeared.

The body of an elderly man was found in Santhipuram salt fields in Mannar on Saturday. 

The man is believed to be 82-year-old Kathirkamanathan Arulananthan from the village of Pannankaddikkodu. 

<p>Sri Lanka's president Maithripala Sirisena told the Singaporean prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong today to expect amendments to the Free Trade Agreement in place between the two countries.&nbsp;</p> <p>"A few mistakes had been made by Sri Lanka when drafting the FTA," Sirisena explained during a meeting with Loong in Singapore today.&nbsp;</p> <p>In December, Sirisena said the FTA had been signed "without adequate consent", pointing to the findings of his expert committee.&nbsp;</p>

Heavy rains fell in Mullaitivu today just weeks after families recovered from recent flooding across the Vanni area. 

Families continue to watch apprehensively as the rains fall, fearful of further flooding and damage to agricultural land. 

Over 100 displaced families from Keppapulavu, Mullaitivu today moved their ongoing protest to outside the military camp sited on their occupied lands. 

Security forces filmed and photographed the families from within the site however, as security was increased with a heavy deployment of police and military personnel.