Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Co-operative and Internal Trade has announced it will set the price of rice from midnight today, reported Ceylon Today.

The rice harvest is expected to be hit hard by the current drought and farmers have been asked to refrain from growing the water-intensive crop, said LBO.

"The drought is worrying us to some extent," Central Bank Governor Nivard Cabraal said.

"In the agricultural side we have to make sure that there is no unnecessary spike in prices. At the same time we can have an impact where generation of electricity generation is concerned."

The Sri Lankan government is arresting and mistreating innocent female relatives of men who it suspects are attempting to revive the LTTE, according to a rights group based on the island.

The Women’s Action Network has detailed the cases of six women who were arrested from the Northeast in a statement, adding that the Criminal Investigations Department is keeping the women in inhumane conditions denying them medical care, reported the Associated Press.

The rights group said five of the women were arrested for links to “Gopi”, who the government claims to be the “new leader” of the LTTE.

The Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) has questioned Sri Lanka’s motives for its recent proscription of Tamil diaspora organisations and individuals based on information which the government claims to have procured from LTTE officials five years ago.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, President, Mr Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam stated that the TNPF condemned the extensive ban and believed that there was no evidence or justification to support it.

Explaining what the TNPF believed to be the main motives for the ban, Mr Ponnambalam said:

“After a resolution critical of Sri Lanka was passed in Geneva, the government now needs to save face in the south. This ban is the government’s way of protecting its Sinhala nationalist credentials.”

“Since the Rajapaksa government rests on the laurels of having defeated the LTTE, it needs to reiterate this to its voter base, to counter the increasing humiliation Sri Lanka has faced internationally.”

Tamil Nadu’s fishing community expressed relief at India’s loss to Sri Lanka in the ICC T20 cricket world cup final, as a previous win was followed by attacks at sea believed to revenge by Sri Lankan navy personal, the Times of India reports.

The National Freedom Front (NFF), a partner of President Mahinda Rajapaksa's ruling coalition, warned the Sri Lankan government against being caught in an ‘international trap’ set by ‘enemy forces’ in the guise of an international investigation into wartime atrocities, reported ColomboPage.

A spokesman for the NFF, Mohammad Muzammil, told reporters that India’s motives in abstaining on the UN resolution against Sri Lanka were doubtful. He accused India of secretly backing an international investigation, and claimed Delhi was instrumental in getting two previous resolutions on Sri Lanka through the UN Human Rights Council.

The Sri Lankan government's proscription last week of 15 Tamil diaspora organisations and over 400 individuals was a brazen attempt to instil fear into the Tamil people. Over and beyond those specifically named or officially affiliated to the organisations, given the organisations' mass membership, the proscription criminalises a quarter of the Eelam Tamil population, and all Tamils living on the island who engage with them. It is the mass banning of Tamil civil society. Sri Lanka's broad definition of 'terrorism', including those demanding Tamil political rights and those that criticise human rights abuses by the state, effectively encompasses any threat to Sinhala Buddhist hegemony. Any remaining faint hopes of reconciliation, are made even more unlikely. Ultimately and entirely in keeping with the Sri Lankan state's overarching and long-standing project of consolidating its hegemony, the proscription - ironically only made significant by virtue of the nation's very inextricable connectedness - is an attempt to dismantle the Tamil nation and thereby seek to extinguish the nation's political aspirations.

The Sri Lankan government may take legal action against people testifying before any UN implemented commission, reports Ceylon Today.

Minister of Mass Media Keheliya Rambukwella said:

"We will take legal action against anyone who testifies before this commission, if the evidence submitted by them is in violation of the country's Constitution."