A senior US State Department official will urge Sri Lanka to make progress on transitional justice and accountability, as well as on human rights, reconciliation and constitutional reform.

Alice Wells, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, will travel to Sri Lanka and the Maldives this week.

“In Colombo, she will meet with Sri Lankan officials and will emphasize the importance of the U.S.-Sri Lanka relationship to shared Indo-Pacific goals, with the growing bilateral defense relationship as an area of particular promise,” a State Department media note said.

The Tamil Youth Organisation UK (TYO) has condemned the Oxford Union’s invitation to Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is set to speak on the ‘geopolitics of the Indian Ocean region’ later today.

Dozens of protestors gathered in London yesterday to protest against Sri Lanka’s Northern Province Governor Reginald Cooray, who is visiting London this week.

Thousands of people have signed a petition that was delivered to the United Nations and Canadian parliament last week, calling for action to be taken over the disappearances of tens of thousands of Tamils as families of the disappeared continue to protest across the North-East.

The petitions gathered 3,324 signatures from 38 different countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Switzerland, Germany and the United States of America amongst others, and were submitted to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and before the Canadian parliament.

Vijayakala Maheswaran, a Tamil parliamentarian with the UNP, has been arrested by Sri Lankan police this morning over a speech she gave earlier this year which faced criticism from cross-party Sinhala politicians for calling for a resurgence of the LTTE in order to curb crime rates in North-East.

Maheswaran has since been released on a Rs 500,000 bail, after being produced before the Colombo Chief Magistrate.

Last month, Sri Lanka's Attorney General advised the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to file a case at the Court of Appeal against the UNP MP, after she was forced to resign her ministerial post following pressure from Sinhalese politicians.

Four Tamil political prisoners hunger-striking in Colombo’s Magazine prison have been admitted to hospital.

The four - Seethagopal Arumugam, Rasathurai Jeyanthan, Thevasahayam Uthayakumar and Joseph Sebastian - were admitted following a decline in their health, four days after starting the hunger strike.

They are part of a group of 42 political prisoners in the Colombo prison to be hunger-striking to be tried or released. They began the protest following similar actions by Tamil political prisoners in Anuradhapura prison who began hunger-striking for their release over three weeks ago.

Gunshots were fired at a tractor carrying sand, in Jaffna on Saturday according to local reports.

The incident took place around 6pm on Saturday in Maniyanthoddam where illegal sand mining has become an issue locally.

The driver of the tractor said two unknown men tried to stop the vehicle. The driver did not stop but drove away faster, to which one of the men shot at the vehicle with a pistol.

The tractor and driver were unharmed, although the shooters escaped.

Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) announced that yet another Sri Lankan navy chief was involved in the abduction and murder of Tamil youths in 2008, and is actively supressing evidence and ‘keeping tabs’ on key witnesses involved in the case.

Former navy chief Wasantha Karannagoda is accused of knowing that the 11 Tamil youths had been abducted by the Sri Lankan navy between 2008 and 2009, and were being transferred between Colombo and Trincomalee navy camps before being murdered.

Sri Lanka’s former president Mahinda Rajapaksa met with current president and former political rival Maithripala Sirisena earlier this week, as reports over a possible coalition between the two continue.

Sirisena, the current leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SFLP), ran against Rajapaksa for president in 2015, entering a coalition with the United National Party (UNP). The coalition has been losing electoral ground to Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka People’s Party (SLPP), which swept local elections in the Sinhala south earlier this year.

A revamped Counter Terrorism Bill will be presented in Sri Lanka’s parliament this week, reports the Sunday Times.

The bill has reportedly been approved by Sri Lanka’s cabinet and would criminalise acts that will cause “harm to the territorial integrity or sovereignty of Sri Lanka”.

The proposed legislation would also criminalise “joining, becoming a member of, supporting or representing a proscribed terrorist organization for the purpose of aiding and abetting the commission of an offence under this Act”.