Leader of the Ape Jana Bala Party Ven. Aturaliye Rathana Thera, yesterday, asked the government to ban madrasas, burka and Kathi courts within one week. Otherwise, he said, his party would launch a nationwide campaign to boycott Muslim businesses.

The Court of Appeal today issued an interim order preventing the enforcement of a warrant issued for the arrest of Former Minister Ravi Karunanayake and six others by the Colombo Fort Magistrate.

Police STF personnel have arrested Krishan Nilanga Dabare alias ‘Baboon’ who is a member of an organized criminal gang.

M.A.H.P. Marasinghe, an 84-year old retired female teacher had handed Rs. 200,000 to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who was in Puttalam yesterday as a contribution to COVID Fund.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday expressed his readiness to carry forward President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s programme for the country with even more vigour. The Prime Minister said he will support a programme that would make the country free from various foreign shackles.

National Cricketer Kusal Mendis who was arrested in relation to a fatal motor accident has been released on bail by the Panadura Magistrate’s Court.

The farmers in Polonnaruwa made a strong plea to the President not to allow the intermediaries to create an artificial rice shortage. They pointed out that there was a bumper harvest in the previous seasons. ‘Hence, the Government should not allow the attempts to create a rice shortage to succeed,” the farmers said.

If elections were held in North and East during the ceasefire period, UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe would have won that election and LTTE Leader Prabhakaran would still be alive and perhaps even be the Governor of the North-Eastern Province, UNP Candidate Vijayakala Maheswaran has said.

Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Puttalam District candidate and former parliamentarian Ashoka Wadigamangawa (68) has died in a road accident at Padeniya on the Kurunegala-Puttalam road, police said.

Sri Lanka has not been exempted from the Global Travel Advisory or border restrictions for the British nationals against all but essential international travel, at this initial stage, the British High Commission in Colombo said today.

Former Northern Provincial Councillor M. K. Sivajilingam has been arrested by Valvettithurai Police for avoiding court proceedings.

Sri Lankan cricketer Kusal Mendis has been arrested over a fatal accident in Panadura, police said.

A Briton who converted to Islam and later plotted to bomb three busy places in London of the kind carried out in a Sri Lanka church in 2019, was on Friday sentenced to life imprisonment, Scotland Yard said following a judgement in the widely-followed case.

More than 1,000 mobile phones, 1,310 batteries and 688 SIM cards were seized from inmates during search operations at several prisons yesterday, a senior prisons official said.