The Palestinian Authority will confer the president of Sri Lanka with its highest accolade, the ‘Star of Palestine’, reported the DailyMirror.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is due to visit Palestine tomorrow, where he will meet with President Mahmoud Abbas, and will receive the award for showing solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle.

The Palestinian Authority has already named a road after Rajapaksa in Ramallah.

The British Tamil Conservatives have called on the British government to impose travel bans and seize foreign assets on Sri Lankans suspected of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, reported The Island.

Arujuna Sivananthan from the BTC said the group will focus their attention on the UNHRC session in March as Sri Lanka will not have a credible independent inquiry by March and neither will it abide by any eventual resolution passed.

Talks between the US and Sri Lanka on importing Iranian crude oil have been unsuccessful, according to a Sri Lankan official.

Petroleum Resources Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa said that several rounds of talks were held both in Colombo and in Washington, but no agreement was found and that the US informed Sri Lanka that it cannot import Iranian oil, in line with sanctions imposed on Teheran.

Non-compliance would mean that Sri Lankan banks would be cut off from the US financial system.

The US Embassy in Colombo is launching a new programme to promote greater understanding of social media.

The Social Media Lab will offer free courses to beginners, intermediate and advanced users of social media at the American Centre in Colombo, according to a press release by the embassy.

Three churches were attacked on Christmas Eve in the south of the island, with at least one of the attacks involving Buddhist monks, reported the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL).

The organisation reported that  in Angunukolapalassa more than 300 villagers and Buddhists monks gathered outside the church demanding all services be stopped. On the same night unidentified assailants attacked two others churches in Hikkaduwa.

Canadian MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan has stated that she was subjected to “political intimidation”, and warned she could be arrested and deported, whilst visiting Jaffna earlier this week.

In a statement released on the New Democrat Party website, Sitsabaiesan said,

“I recently arrived in Sri Lanka to visit my extended family and visit the places that were once home for me, during the earlier stages of my life and the civil war in Sri Lanka; but was subject to political intimidation”.

The Sri Lankan Central Bank has cut a key lending rate by 50 points to 8%, the fourth consecutive cut since December 2012.

The move is thought to be designed to encourage growth, after inflation fell to its lowest level in nearly two years.

The bank said it expected the economy to grow 7.2% in 2013, up from 6.4% in 2012.

"Economic growth is expected to accelerate further during the new year, while inflation is projected to remain in mid-single digits," the bank said in a statement.

"It was decided at the meeting to take immediate action on several overdue urgent issues to enable the Northern Provincial Council to commence functioning smoothly to address the needs of the war affected people of the North and especially of its war widows, the displaced, the dispossessed, the war orphans, the long term PTA detainees, women headed households and other vulnerable sections of the Northern society."