Heavy rains that began on 16th December have had a devastating effect on the North-East, with Batticaloa and Puttalam the worst affected, said IRIN on Friday.

The rains and ensuing floods have displaced at least 31,000 people and killed 39, according to the Sri Lanka's Disaster Management Centre.

The Sri Lankan president Mahinda rajapakse has offered the services of a Sri Lankan doctor to ailing Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, saying that the doctor will be “significantly instrumenta” to his recovery.

In a letter to President Chavez, Rajapakse said the government and the people of Sri Lanka are praying for his well being.

See extracts from letter:

“It is interesting that Jayasekara is being put forward as the Sri Lankan representative in Australia to defend the indefensible, an acknowledgement that the Sri Lankan high commissioner, Thisara Samarasinghe, has singularly failed to get his message across.”

”Australians are quite used to weighing the facts, they saw through the propaganda of the South African apartheid regime, the lies over East Timor and weapons of mass destruction and it is only a matter of time before the truth will out on the treatment of Tamils and the political enemies of the corrupt Rajapaksa regime.”

The president of the Tamil National People's Front (TNPF), Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, has received a summons by the Terrorism Investigation Division of Vavuniya and a note written entirely in Sinhalese, instructing him to present himself at the TID office on 29th December at 11am.

The TNPF leader is reported to be outside the island at present.

Several hundred Australians gathered outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground to protest against Sri Lanka’s cricket tour of Australia, calling on cricketing authorities to boycott the country.

Sri Lanka’s Terrorist Investigation Division arrested 45 former LTTE cadres, it was announced on Wednesday.

The arrests occurred as part of search operations in Jaffna reported Sri Lanka’s police.
Superintendent Prishantha Jayakodi stated that,

“They were arrested as a result of operations carried out over the last month,”

The government of Iran has expressed its willingness to further boost links with Sri Lanka, by looking to expand ties in the judicial fields.

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Justice and Sri Lanka Muslim Congress leader Rauf Hakeem went to meet Iranian Justice Minister Seyed Morteza Bakhtiari  in Iran earlier this week, with Bakhtiari stating that he hoped to transfer Iran’s legal experience over to Sri Lanka.

He was quoted by Fars news agency as saying,

The Sri Lankan Army has completed the construction of another hotel, this time on the shores of the Nanthikadal Lagoon.

The Lagoon’s Edge is a luxury hotel, built entirely of teak and was built in a "place where thousands of war heroes, terrorists and others died", according to Sinhalese newspaper Mawbima.

Tamil women, who were recruited into the army last month, received their first salary on Sunday at the army's Trincomalee base.