Security booths have been installed in Jaffna ahead of the Nallur Kandasamy Kovil’s annual festival, with Jaffna police ordering that all devotees must be searched before entry.

The orders came following the Easter Sunday bombings in Colombo and Batticaloa earlier this year.

Displaced Muslims who were forced from their homes in the wake of anti-Muslim violence in Sri Lanka following the Easter Sunday attacks, are still to be resettled more than three months after the bombs, reports The New Humanitarian.

Some 228 people are still searching for safe shelter according to the UN’s refugee agency, which has been attempting to relocate the displaced.

The European Union (EU) expressed its willingness to support Sri Lanka in countering violent extremism and to support improvements in coordinating the country's counter terrorism efforts.  . 

Sahathevan Nilakshan, journalist and popular student leader, murdered aged 22 while still a media student, was remembered in Jaffna on the twelth anniversary of his death on Thursday.

On August 1 2007, Nilakshan, an up and coming Tamil journalist was shot and killed by suspected Sri Lankan military intelligence personnel.

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Fiannce and Media Mangala Samaraweera admitted that the island “has been in crisis, remains in crisis and will continue to be in crisis until we can create a just and equal Sri Lanka,” in a speech to parliament last week, where he called for federalism.

Mullaitivu locals protested in front of the National Housing Development Authority this week, after a much touted housing scheme has left residents mired in debt.

Human Rights Watch reports that Sri Lankan authorities have continued to fail to hold accountable the responsible for the ACF massacre, where 17 aid workers were summarily executed by Sri Lankan troops in Muttur in 2006.

The United National Party has pledged jobs to unemployed graduates in Jaffna if they voted for the party in upcoming elections, reports Sri Lanka’s Sunday Times. 

Sri Lanka’s State Minister for Education Vijayakala Maheswaran has reportedly been registering details of unemployed graduates and others who are seeking government jobs at her office at Palaly Road.

Sinhala speaking men dressed in civil uniform photographed Tamil lawyers who appeared at the Chavakachcheri Magistrate Court earlier today, in an apparent act of intimidation as the Navatkuli Disappearances habeas corpus inquiry was underway.

One of the men was then seen getting into a car belonging to the Deputy Solicitor General representing the Sri Lankan army, said Senior Lecturer & Head of Jaffna University’s Department of Law, Kumaravadivel Guruparan on Twitter.

Buddhist monks in Trincomalee led prayers at the Kanniya hot wells, with hundreds of Sinhalese followers attempting to crowd out Tamil devotees who were commemorating an important fast day at the spring’s Hindu temple.

Sri Lanka's Parliament passed an extension of the state of emergency for the third time since the Easter Sunday attacks by Islamist extremists, who targeted churches and luxury hotels.

The bill received 42 votes in favour, whilst 2 Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MPs voted against the extension. 

Without a political solution to Sri Lanka’s enduring ethnic crisis and a new constitution for the island “the future of this country will be worse than anything we have ever seen,” warned senior Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian M A Sumanthiran.