Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Education website has been hacked and is currently offline, with a message purportedly left by an A-Level student stating there are “security flaws”.

“This website was hacked,” says the message displayed for all users who tried to access the website.

United States representative Wiley Nickel has urged Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to address the plight of Eelam Tamils by supporting their right to self-determination and called for "a fair and impartial independence referendum to resolve this painful conflict". 

The Colombo Christian Cooperation Movement joined farmers of Mayilathamadu and Madhavanai, as they marked 201 days of protest calling on the removal of illegal Sinhalese settlers and the return of their rightful land.

Celebrations took place in the North-East to mark Easter Sunday and Good Friday. 

 The world's largest refiner, China's Sinopec plans to start work on a refinery in Sri Lanka by June, the power minister said last Thursday.

Officials of Sinopec Overseas Investment Holding were visiting Colombo for talks with Sri Lankan authorities.

"The officials indicated that the management of Sinopec has decided to double the capacity of the refinery from the original proposal," the minister, Kanchana Wijesekera, wrote on social media platform X.

State Minister of Social Empowerment, Anupa Pasqual says president Ranil Wickremesinghe should consider a presidential pardon for Gnanasara, a convicted racist Buddhist monk, following his recent sentencing. 

Sri Lanka’s former president Maithripala Sirisena claimed that India was behind the deadly Easter Sunday attacks that saw hundreds killed as churches and hotels were bombed in 2019.

Residents in Kalmunai staged a protest calling for justice to be meted out to the victims and survivors of the terror attacks on Easter Sunday. They also called for an investigation to be carried out without further delay. 

Tamils protested outside the Tissa Raja Vihara in Thaiyiddy, Jaffna, which was illegally constructed and is encroaching on the lands owned by local residents. 

A group of three Tamils who were released after spending three decades in prison over the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi were finally reunited with their families, but faced further questioning from the Sri Lankan police on their arrival back on the island.

Security was tightened last week in Keppapulavu over planned protests by residents who have been demanding the release of their lands currently occupied by the Sri Lankan military.

Last week, India’s most senior political figures sparked off a row that continues to rage. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Foreign Minister S Jaishankar expressed their outrage at the 1974 decision by Congress to cede the Katchatheevu islet to Sri Lanka after a set of new documents were publicly unveiled. The small island midway across the Palk Strait remains uninhabited but carries significant political weight, with Indian political parties in Tamil Nadu and beyond seeking to distance themselves from the decision to grant the territory to Colombo. Though the row is domestic for now, it scratches at a deeper issue that remains emotive and crucially important for millions of Tamils – the safety of Tamil Nadu fishermen.

Six of the eight Tamils who were arrested at Vedukkunaari Hill temple in Vavuniya last month, filed a complaint at Sri Lanka's Human Rights Commission (HRC)  in Colombo after the local office in Vavuniya failed to take action over the case.