Families of the disappeared protest in Maruthankerny marked one year since their ongoing campaign began.

Northern Province residents are forced to wait hours for Tamil-language services at police stations, the Chief Minister has said.

In a meeting with police officials, Chief Minister Wigneswaran said police departments across the North did not have enough Tamil language capacity to serve the population.

Police officials responded that they struggle to recruit Tamil officers and that Tamils did not come forward to join the force.

Sri Lankan police are occupying fifty homes in Kankesanthurai which were supposed to be returned to their owners following the land's release by the Sri Lankan Army, the Northern Province Chief Minister has said.

In a meeting with police officials, Chief Minister Wigneswaran pointed out that around 111 police officers are using fifty privately owned houses as work and residential premises.

Police officials said the homes could only be released when a new headquarters and residence was built for the police department.

Police have agreed to release a Jaffna school's building and well following pressure from the Northern Provincial Council.

The Japanese government has agreed to support Sri Lanka in the development of ports at Trincomalee and colombo. 

Meeting with the Sri Lankan president who is currently visitng Tokyo, the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe was quoted by the Colombo Page as saying that "Japan would provide assistance for the Sri Lanka's infrastructure development prioritizing the development of ports."

Mr Abe reportedly said Japan "would work towards providing funds without loans anytime possible while giving assistance to the development programs of Sri Lanka."

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The Sri Lankan prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe said the government would b enacting laws aimed at controlling hate speech on social media. 

“A number of countries in the world have introduced laws to control social media and hate speech. The UK has laws in place to control hate speech. So has Kenya. There are laws to control social media in Germany,” Mr Wickremesinghe was quoted by the Daily Mirror as saying. 

The Sri Lankan president, Maithripala Sirisena on Thursday tweeted saying he had instructed the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) to end the ban on accessing the social media website, Facebook. 

He said the decision came after the presidential secretary Austin Fernando had held discussions with Facebook officials. 

The ban on Viber ended yesterday, amid widespread criticism of the government's decision to impose restrictions on access to social media following attacks on Muslims in Kandy earlier this month. 

The Sri Lankan government has continued with its policy of granting interest free loans to Sri Lankan troops, despite struggling to repay record levels of debt.

^{Photograph: JDS}

The leader of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), a Sinhala Buddhist extremist group, was seen attending an event with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena in Tokyo this week, just days after deadly anti-Muslim riots erupted on the island.

Footage emerged of BBS chief Galagodaaththe Gnanasara seated on the front row of a packed room at the Imperial hotel in Tokyo, whilst Mr Sirisena delivered a speech.

The Sri Lankan government accused Facebook of failing to act swiftly to curb hate speech by Sinhala Buddhist extremists on the social media platform, which it says stoked anti-Muslim riots on the island last week.

Harin Fernando, Sri Lanka’s telecommunications minister, said “this whole country could have been burning in hours”.

Speaking to the Guardian, he added that “hate speech is not being controlled by these organisations and it has become a critical issue globally”. “

Facebook is not reacting as fast as we have wanted it to react. In the past it has taken various number of days to review [flagged posts] or even to take down the pages.”