By: Asela Kuruluwansha COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The heads of Sri Lanka's four main Buddhist monastic orders have objected to the prison authorities' decision to bring the jailed nationalist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero to court in lay clothing, saying that only the Buddhist clergy can decide whether a monk loses his ordained status. In a letter to the commissioner general of prisons, the prelates said that no council of monks had found Gnanasara Thero guilty of a pārājika, the gravest cate

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Oct. 7, 2026 On Tuesday, Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara presented the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill to Parliament. It would repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1979, a law successive governments promised to abolish and kept using. The same day, the Government Printer released a second bill under his name, the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill, which the government says will give effect to the United Nations Convention aga

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — The knife used to kill Anne Laksha Ignatius, the 31-year-old culinary and hospitality instructor stabbed inside her family home in Nallur on Monday, was a professional meat-cutting knife taken from the kitchen of the Jaffna hotel where her suspected killer worked, people familiar with the investigation said. The suspect, Thevathas Pugalarasan, worked at NorthGate, the hotel on Station Road near the Jaffna railway station. The knife was used for cutting meat in the hotel's ki

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Nineteen years after Sahathevan Nilakshan, a 22-year-old journalism student and magazine editor, was shot dead at his family's home during a military curfew, the University of Jaffna on Wednesday awarded a gold medal bearing his name to the top student in its Media Studies program. The Sahathevan Nilakshan Memorial Gold Medal went to Thanushka Sanjeewa, a graduate from Trincomalee who finished first in her batch. It was presented on Oct. 7, the second day of the university's