The Sri Lankan Economic Development Ministry has announced it is to receive a grant worth €60 million for its District Development Programme.

According to the Daily Mirror, the announcement was made by the head of the EU delegation, Bernard Savage during a meeting with Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapakse on Monday.

The money will go to projects selected by the Sri Lankan government and implemented by UN and World Bank agencies.

Responding to calls from Tamil Nadu to expel Sri Lankan army personnel from India, the Indian Minister of State for Defence, MM Pallam Raju, said that India would continue to train them.

In a statement, Pallam Raju said,

Reports of a further prison attack last week in Galle against Tamil political detainees have emerged.

The Jaffna newspaper, Uthayan, reported this morning, that Tamil political prisoners were attacked in Galle prison last week, leaving several injured and one detainee, 34-year-old Sundaram Satheeskumar, in a coma.

Satheeskumar was arrested by in 2008, from his home in Kodikaamam, and imprisoned in New Magazine prison in Colombo. According to Uthayan, when his wife, Kavitha, and his young daughter, Sahitya, went to visit him on the 24th August, they were informed by prison guards that he had been transferred to Galle prison three days ago. When they then went to Galle, they found Satheeskumar admitted to Karapitiya Hospital in a coma.

Japanese envoy Yasushi Akashi has offered to liaise between the international community and Sri Lanka in order to help ‘develop’ the relationship, which has been strained over war crimes and Sri Lanka's failure to conduct independent investigations into the allegations.

In a press conference in Saturday, Akashi said that he told Mahinda Rajapakse that Japan is "willing to assist in the efforts to develop the relationship between Sri Lanka and the international community."

According to secret correspondence with the State Intelligence Service (SIS), ‘two strong Western nations’ and several INGOs are the background instigators of unrelenting anti-government protests on the island, reports Uthayan.

The Sri Lankan Ministry of External Affairs is reported to be paying extra attention to the matter as internal investigations take place.

There has recently been a spate of protests by fishermen and farmers, students and lecturers, the opposition and not least the Tamils.

Western nations and INGOs have been accused of aiding demonstrators with funding and other assistance to carry out protests.

The government is treating this ‘conspiracy to overthrow the regime’ with extreme caution.

The recently resigned chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tilak Karunaratne, has said he is willing to provide evidence of malpractices in the Colombo Stock Exchange.

Speaking to the Daily Mirror on practices between June 2010 and December 2010, Karunaratne said:

“Yes of course, this was most certainly day light robbery. During the conflict the market was dull and there was quite rightly euphoria after the war ended. Then the market gradually rose up."

"Then suddenly we find that between June and December 2010 it shot up suddenly. And this was due to manipulation. What they did was they found certain stocks which are not liquid. These stocks have no intrinsic value and they started manipulating and arbitrarily increasing the price by having trades among themselves and their crony brokers."

The Sri Lankan army is currently constructing an army camp for the 592 regiment, over the razed Mulliavallai LTTE cemetery, reported Tamilwin.

The LTTE's Mulliavallai cemetery was demolished soon after the government claimed victory in 2009, along with other LTTE memorials and cemeteries in the North-East.

Parents of the fallen LTTE cadres are said to be angered by the army's construction over the remains of their son or daughter.