Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian M A Sumanthiran has reiterated his call for federalism, despite the new Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa repeatedly stating his opposition to devolving powers.

The Australian government has been found to have created fake horoscopes, as part of an advertising campaign to discourage those fleeing Sri Lanka from coming to the country.

The General Secretary of the Sinhala nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) has been arrested by Sri Lankan police, after they decided to reopen a criminal case into a 2016 road traffic accident.

Champika Ranawaka, a former Sri Lankan government minister who defected from the previous Rajapaksa regime to back the United National Party, was remanded by the Colombo Magistrate.

A vigil was held in Amparai on Tuesday, honouring the mothers and fathers of disappeared Tamils who have died whilst campaigning to find the whereabouts of their children.

The candlelit vigil at Thambiluvil was attended by more than 100 people. They marched through the streets with a banner bearing the portraits of at least 58 activists who have passed away.

In a report released by the World Economic Forum on the Global Gender Gap, Sri Lanka saw its gap in gender parity continue to grow.

United Nations peacekeepers deployed in Haiti, including Sri Lankan soldiers, have fathered hundreds of babies with young mothers - sometimes through sexual violence - before abandoning them, reports a new study published this week.

The study, published today on The Conversation, says that “girls as young as 11 were sexually abused and impregnated by peacekeepers and . . . ‘left in misery’ to raise their children alone”.

That includes Sri Lankan peacekeepers linked to a paedophilic sex ring in Haiti, where at least 134 soldiers exploited nine children from 2004 to 2006. The Sri Lankan military repatriated 114 of the soldiers after a group of children identified them as paedophiles, but none have ever been prosecuted. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed alarm following a recent wave of harassment and attacks on journalists in Sri Lanka, following the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

With the intensifying attacks against local media, including harassment and interrogation by police forces, the CPJ has called on authorities to "hold those responsible to account, and ensure that journalists can report freely in the country".

Senior Sinhala Buddhist monk Omalpe Sobitha has called for Sri Lanka to withdraw from the Commonwealth in retaliation to the newly elected British Prime Minister’s call for reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka. 

A Tamil man from Mannar has been reported missing by his family this week.

Thirty-year-old Antonis Nimal who is employed as an outreach officer at the Nanattan divisional council was last seen leaving for work on Saturday morning.

The Swiss government has criticised Sri Lanka for a lack of due process following the arrest of one of its embassy employees in Colombo, after she claimed to have been abducted in the southern capital last month.

“Switzerland wishes to emphasise that in this high-profile case Sri Lanka's reputation as a country that upholds the rule of law is at stake,” said a Swiss government statement.

Sri Lanka’s president Gotabaya Rajapaksa met with Switzerland’s ambassador to Colombo this week, where he told him that the alleged abduction of a Swiss embassy employee last month was “a total fabrication”.

The head of a Sinhala nationalist organisation has demanded that former Chief Minister of the Northern Province C V Wigneswaran is arrested by Sri Lankan police after he said it was wrong to call Sri Lankan a Buddhist country last week.

Dan Priyasad, head of the Nawa Sinhale National Movement, filed an official complaint at Sri Lanka’s Police Headquarters and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) demanding the senior Tamil politician be arrested.