Sri Lanka’s Minister of Finance and Mass Media Mangala Samaraweera met with the Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister CV Wigneswaran to discuss possible ways to utilise RS 1 billion rupees allocated by Sri Lanka’s 2018 budget to the Northern Province.

Speaking at the council, Mr Samaraweera said the Budget had also made provisions to help resettle former LTTE cadres and provide them with soft loans.

The Office of Missing Persons (OMP) will not be used as a punitive body and will not lead to criminal procedures or prosecutions said its chairperson Attorney Saliya Pieris.

Speaking in an interview with dailynews.lk, Mr Pieris said,

“Our function is not to punish. The law specifically says the findings of the OMP cannot be used in any criminal or civil proceeding. They cannot be used as evidence in a criminal proceeding.”

Commenting on what the office would do if potential violations of criminal law were found, he said,

The Tamil National People’s Front will support the Tamil National Alliance to ensure that Sinhalese parties don’t take control of Vavuniya North.

Speaking at the Jaffna Press Club today, the TNPF’s national coordinator V. Manivannan said that the TNPF was committed to ensuring that Tamil parties led the Tamil homeland and would ally with the other Tamil nationalist parties to ensure that Sinhalese parties did not takeover control of the Vavuniya North divisional council (pradeshiya sabha).

The 120th birth anniversary of S J V Chelvanayakam was marked at his memorial statue in Mannar today.

The only option for the PM is to step down, said State Minister Dilan Perera on Friday.

Describing the incumbent prime-minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as a roadblock in the functioning of the unity government, Mr Perera called on the prime minster to step down whilst speaking at a press conference.

Mr Perara accused the prime-minister of blocking efforts to resolve the Bond scam crisis which saw UNP politicians accused of corruption.

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As evidence into the murder of Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge unfolds in court with high-level police officials implicated in coverups and destruction of evidence, a report has shown that two Tamil youths were abducted and murdered and had their motorcycle stolen in an attempt to frame the LTTE for the journalist’s assassination.

A report by the Daily Mirror states:

“According to the ‘B’ Reports, the motorcycle had been stolen in Vavuniya on January 18 by blindfolding and abducting Balraj Ram Prakash and Kumarasingham Vishnukumar whist they were travelling to Settikulam.   

Sri Lanka’s Army announced that it had agreed a ‘national’ vetting process with the UN for personnel that it sends out on UN peacekeeping assignments.

In a statement published on the army website, it said,

The Sri Lankan Prime Minister has said reviving “fallen” education in the North would take at least another ten years.

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe said this at Temple Trees on Wednesday at a ceremony to hand out permanent appointment letters for around 400 teachers to the Northern Province.

“The whole system of education in the North had fallen today. What have to do is to lay the foundation stone to revive this system in the province. It will take time,” he said.

A newly elected local government member has been arrested in connection with the anti-Muslim violence in Kandy.

Kumara Mohottige Samantha Perera alias Araliya Samantha, a member elected to a divisional council in the Kandy district was arrested by the Terrorism Investigation Department (TID).

Mr Samantha is a member of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, the Rajapaksa-led Sri Lanka Freedom Party breakaway that swept the elections in the Sinhala South.

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A temporary police checkpoint in Maniyanthottam, Jaffna was set ablaze by unknown persons on Wednesday.