Sri Lanka Tuesday accused the U.N. rights chief of "unwarranted interference" by calling for an international inquiry into allegations troops killed thousands of civilians at the end of the civil war.

The government of President Mahinda Rajapakse formally rejected the demand by rights chief Navi Pillay for an external investigation into what she had called "credible allegations" that 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed by Sri Lankan forces in 2009.

Sri Lanka's main opposition accused the government Thursday of awarding contracts to a World Bank-blacklisted Chinese company and said it would not honor the deals if it regains power.

The United National Party (UNP) said the government had recently awarded a contract to the state-owned China Communications Construction Company Limited (CCCC) for a new port city in the capital Colombo despite the World Bank move.

Sri Lanka's central bank boss urged temples Wednesday to go hi-tech and accept electronic cash from worshipers as he blamed the custom of offering prayer money for a coin shortage.

Governor Nivard Cabraal told reporters the guardians of shrines in mainly Buddhist Sri Lanka should install a "tap-and-pray" system similar to the "tap-and-go" used for public transport in many nations.

The United Nations' human rights chief has recommended an international investigation into war crimes committed in Sri Lanka during the final stages of its Tamil separatist conflict, a report said Sunday.

The local Sunday Times newspaper in Sri Lanka said Navi Pillay has asked the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to set up independent probe, saying that Colombo "consistently failed to establish the truth" and ensure accountability for the atrocities, despite repeated calls.

Sri Lanka's police arrested 75 would-be asylum seekers on Wednesday, including nine women and six children, who were trying to leave for New Zealand illegally by boat, police said.

The group was arrested in the southern coastal town of Moragolla, the first large-scale arrest of nationals in months after Australia, long a favorite destination for Sri Lanka's refugees, tightened its borders.

Pope Francis on Saturday turned his focus to Asia, announcing a possible trip to Sri Lanka and approving the beatification of 124 Korean martyrs.

The beatification ceremony for Paul Yun Ji-chung and his 123 fellow martyrs -- who were killed for their Catholic beliefs between 1791 and 1888 -- will take place in South Korea on August 15, the Vatican said in a statement.

Sri Lanka's army led an orgy of indiscriminate killing at the climax of the island's civil war, and has since tried to destroy evidence of its crimes, a new investigation published Wednesday by foreign experts claimed.

A report released by the Public Interest Advocacy Center (PIAC) in Australia claimed that soldiers committed the "vast majority" of crimes in a final government offensive against Tamil Tiger separatists in May 2009.

Former Agence France-Presse journalist Mel Gunasekera was stabbed to death on Sunday after a break-in at her family's home in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, police said.

The body of Gunasekera, who had been working for the international ratings agency Fitch, was discovered by her parents at their house in the Battaramulla neighborhood after they returned from church, police spokesman Ajith Rohana said.

Democracy is under threat in Sri Lanka and its rights record has deteriorated in the five years since the end of a bloody ethnic war, a top U.S. envoy said Saturday.

Nisha Biswal, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, said Colombo had failed to ensure reconciliation, justice and accountability, and pressure was building for a foreign probe.

A top U.S. envoy on Friday pushed for reconciliation in Sri Lanka which is under intense international pressure to probe rights abuses during the final stages of the island's decades-long separatist war.

Nisha Biswal, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, held talks with Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris over a range of issues including allegations that government troops killed thousands of Tamil civilians during the final months of the war in 2009, official sources told AFP.