The US Coast Guard conducted training exercises for the Sri Lankan Coast Guard in Trincomalee recently, reports Colombo Page.

The training initiative, said to strengthen maritime security, was part of the Export Control and Related Border Security Program.

Sri Lanka’s Minister for Industry and Commerce, Rishad Bathiyutheen, said the country is taking measures to minimise the impact of the global financial crisis and will look towards India and China to increase their export market, reported ColomboPage.

As the 14th Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session gets under way at the UN Human Rights Council this week, the spotlight will once again fall on Sri Lanka and its human rights record - but just how meaningful a process will it be?

Last time Sri Lanka faced a review at the Council was in 2008, when Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had been elected on a tidal wave of popular Sinhala support for a renewed war effort, was intensifying his military offensive against the LTTE. Whilst the reports of paramilitaries, torture, abductions, killings, and the targeting of human rights defenders, journalists and humanitarian workers were acknowledged in the recommendations, the scale of human rights abuses, war crimes and genocide that Sri Lanka unleashed less than a year later, made a mockery of the entire process. Re-visiting the 2008 recommendations, in light of what has happened and continues to take place, should be a sobering read to any within the UPR Working Group.

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Mass Media and Information, Keheliya Rambukwella, said the government will discuss the effects of sanctions on Iran with the US government, reported the Sunday Times

Just after the defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa warned the 13th Amendment in the constitution was a "time bomb", the Media Minister and Cabinet Spokesperson, Keheliya Rambukwella, told the media that the government had not decided about the 13th Amendment, and that the President had reiterated the government's intention to implement the 13th plus.

A day after a UK High Court halted the deportation of a number of Tamil asylum seekers over fears of torture on return, a Tamil asylum seeker in Australia was issued with a deportation notice.

Speaking to The Island, the GTF spokesperson, Suren Surendiran and the president of NCET, Panchakulasingam Kandiah, reiterated the absurdity of the government's claims of dialogue with the diaspora, and warned the government 'not to engage in futile propaganda exercises to deceive the international community ahead of the forthcoming UPR'.

Published 13:54 BST

Dozens of Tamil asylum seekers have sought last minute appeals against their deportation to Sri Lanka at the High Court on Tuesday.

Solicitors for the asylum seekers have cited previous evidence of Tamil deportees being tortured on arriving back in Sri Lanka, and lodged their appeals.

Published 16:48 BST

The UK’s High court has ordered the deportation of a number of Tamils to Sri Lanka be halted, after last-minute court injunctions were filed by solicitors citing evidence that they may be tortured upon their return.

The British government has been accused of wasting tax payer’s money by deporting Tamils to Sri Lanka on half-empty planes.

DMK leader M Karunanidhi has criticised the building of victory memorials in the North, accusing the Sri Lankan goverment of undertaking such projects purely to offend the sentiments of Tamils.