The Queen will not attend this year's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm), Buckingham Palace has confirmed.
The Palace said Her Majesty will be represented at the summit in Sri Lanka by The Prince of Wales.
It will be the first time the Queen has failed to attend the meeting, which takes place every two years, since 1973.
A British journalist has been shot in his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Faraz Shauketaly, who hold dual British and Sri Lankan citizenship, was rushed to hospital after being shot in the neck on Friday.
He works for Sri Lankan paper the Sunday Leader. The Foreign Office said they were shocked and concerned by the incident. FCO Minister Alistair Burt said:
Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim and his family. Our consular staff have visited him in hospital today, and we’re ready to provide further assistance if needed.
It remains unclear whether this horrific incident was connected to the victim’s work as a journalist. The Sri Lankan authorities must quickly identify who committed this crime and bring them to justice.
There has been a range of attacks in Sri Lanka on journalists, civil society organizations and others in recent years. To date, too many incidents have had little investigation and no resolution. The UK and EU have urged the Government of Sri Lanka to do everything possible to investigate such incidences and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.
Sri Lanka's chief justice has been found guilty of three charges in impeachment proceedings by a parliamentary panel, a government official has confirmed, in a case which has sparked opposition protests and raised international concerns.
It was not immediately clear if Shirani Bandaranayake, Sri Lanka's first female head of the Supreme Court, has to step down effectively from now or has to wait until parliament debates the impeachment investigations in January.
"We have found her guilty of three charges out of the first five we have investigated," Nimal Siripala de Silva, minister of irrigation and a member of the impeachment panel told reporters.
Parliament Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa appointed an 11-member select committee, seven of them from the ruling party, to investigate 14 charges against Bandaranayake ranging from not disclosing her wealth to professional misconduct.
An influential group of MPs has urged the Prime Minister to boycott a Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka over human rights abuses.
The Foreign Affairs Committee said the decision to hold the Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo next year was "wrong".
The call came in a report on the future of the Commonwealth, which delivered a wider warning that the network's moral authority was being "undermined by the repressive actions of member governments".
The MPs said they were "disturbed" by the ineffectiveness of the mechanisms for upholding the Commonwealth's values, and backed a push to codify them in a charter.
The body's secretariat needs to "sharpen, strengthen and promote its diplomatic performance", according to the report.
The army was called in to bring Sri Lanka's biggest prison under control after a bloody gunbattle broke out, leaving 27 dead and a senior police officer seriously wounded.
Violence broke out as prison guards searched the jail for drugs and illegal mobile phones. Inmates reportedly raided the prison armoury to gain access to a large amount of weapons.