The French Agency for Development(AFD)  has recently approved a 52 million Euro loan to Sri Lanka to finance the Anuradhapura Integrated Urban Development Project.

The financing agreement was signed last week at the Ministry of Finance  in the presence of France’s Ambassador to Sri lanka.

The project is part fo the Strategic Cities Development Program (SCDP) and seeks to develop a more integrated approach to urban planning while preserving the cultural and natural heritage of Anurapdhapuram.

A merger of the North-East will not be immediately possible said TNA spokesperson and MP, MA Sumanthiran on Friday. 

Speaking to journalists from his home in Jaffna, Mr Sumanthiran said the option of a merger found in the 13th amendment will continue in the new constitution. 

Mr Sumanthiran said a form of a mechanism such as an Apex Council that sees the Northern and Eastern provinces working on certain issues together may be included, which they believe would build trust and cooperation, and then the two provinces could be merged after some time. 

Thousands of Tamils in Toronto, Canada commemorated Maaveerar Naal at a number of events across the city, including a large one at Markham Fairgrounds.

Sri Lanka's finance minister, Ravi Karunanayake said hotels and holiday homes run by the military and state agencies will be consolidated under one corporate entity.

Suggesting this would better guide such investments, Mr Karunanayake added the current administration plans to sell-off non-strategic investments, including hotels.

Cabinet Ministers have approved a proposal for a National Defence College to be established in Sri Lanka. 

Residents in Othiyamalai on Friday remembered the massacre of 32 Tamils by the Sri Lankan military in 1984. Lighting lamps, families who had lost their loved ones came together to remember. 

Indian government officials will meet with their Sri Lankan counterparts this month in the hope of expanding trade deals between the two, reports PTI.

The discussions will revolve around the expansion of a free trade agreement (FTA), which currently only applies to certain goods. India has been keen to push for implementation of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, with negotiations having started in February 2005. It has yet to be put in place.

In a brief released today, the Jaffna-based Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research (ACPR) took note of the Centre-Periphery Relations Constitutional Sub-Committee report with cautious optimism, noting that its recommendations "had the potential to positively contribute to a genuine restructuring of the State that accommodates the concerns of the numerically smaller populations vis a vis the current state of the provincial council system and more broadly, the desire of the Tamil people for a genuine form of self-government within a united Sri Lanka."

Tamils in Doha, Qatar, marked Maaveerar Naal (Tamil national remembrance day) this weekend, creating a shrine of remembrance with photographs of fallen Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadre. 

See video here. 

The US State Department held a series of seminars on trade policy from Novemebr 29 till December 1st. 

Over 70 key decision makers and technical experts from various Sri Lankan ministries, agencies, research institutes, trade policy think tanks, and Chambers of Commerce were present, the US embassy said. 

The seminar also included experts from the US International Trade Administration Office of Trade Negotiations and Analysis, the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the World Bank.