P S M Charles, has been appointed as the Governor of the Northern Province and  took her oaths before President Gotabaya Rajapaksa today.

In 2017, Ms Charles was appointed as the Director General of the Sri Lanka Customs Department on the recommendation of previous Minister of Finance and Mass Media, Mangala Samaraweera.

Ms Charles has over 26 years experience of service in the public sector and has perviously served as the Batticaloa Government Agent (GA) and as the Vavuniya GA.  

A Swiss Embassy employee who was detained by the Sri Lankan government following reports of being abducted and molested, was granted bail today.

Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa warned that “non-governmental organisations” had influenced the education system in Sri Lanka, in order to try and “destroy the Sinhala Buddhists”.

Speaking at a ‘Dhamma School’ in Vavuniya on Friday, Rajapaksa told the audience that “Non-Governmental Organizations have deviously intervened in our education system by including content in school textbooks to distort the minds of children”.

“I heard some leading academic bhikkus explaining how school textbooks now have content that will have the effect of corrupting young minds,” he said. 

Britain’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Sarah Hulton met with Colombo’s Justice and Human Rights Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva this week, with the United Kingdom reportedly offering support for “prison and justice reform” on the island.

At least two men, including a Sri Lankan soldier, have been arrested after another soldier was allegedly assaulted in Vavuniya on Christmas Day.

The two men are accused of assaulting the soldier, who was on duty at the Vavuniya Bogaswewa Army Camp. Sri Lankan authorities allege that a rifle was seized, with the injured soldier admitted to the Anuradhapura Military Hospital. It is unclear whether any shots were fired.

One of the men arrested is a soldier who also served at the Bogaswewa Army Camp.

Sri Lankan police are reportedly conducting further investigations.

A Tamil man was shot dead in Mannar on Thursday night by unidentified gunmen.

The man has been identified as 41-year-old Maari Tharmarasa, a labourer and father of two children.

Tharmarasa was found gunned down in a street in front of his home at approximately 9.p.m. local time, in Uyilankulam, Mannar.

Tensions around illegal sand mining in the North-East persist following controversal confrontations in villages such as Thottaveli in Mannar this month.

Tamils in Mannar and Jaffna took to the streets on Friday to protest the issue and condemned local authorities' and police failure to stop the perpetrators.

At least 33 migrant workers who left Sri Lanka to find employment in Kuwait have returned to the island after concerns about their working environments forced them to leave.

The Sri Lankan embassy in Kuwait had to co-ordinate with the Middle Eastern government to ensure the workers were kept in a safe house before they were able to leave the country. 

There are an estimated 100,000 migrant workers from Sri Lanka in Kuwait, predominately compromised of female domestic workers.