Sri Lanka's national anthem will remain only in Sinhala, the Cabinet decided on Wednesday. The move will mean that the current Tamil version will no longer be played at any official or state functions. At present, the Sinhala version of Sri Lanka Matha is used in all parts of the country with the exception of the North and the East which have a large Tamil population.

A specially-chartered flight loaded with some 180 passengers, mostly government politicians and youth, left Colombo on Friday night to attend an international Marxist-oriented student/youth festival in the South African capital of Pretoria—but the JVP has slammed its jumbo delegation as a farce.