Category: Other
Sri Lanka, India talks to end poaching issue
Mar 15, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is to send a team of officials to India for talks on ending poaching by Indian fishermen in the island’s northern waters, fisheries minister Rajitha Senaratne said. “We hope to sign an agreement with India,” he told a news conference. “We are confident we can resolve this problem […]
Sri Lanka wards off tuna quota: minister
Mar 16, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has prevented efforts to restrict her tuna quota in the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), fisheries minister Rajitha Senaratne said. Sri Lanka had revived its activity in the IOTC and was compliant with its rules and did not allow IUU (illegal, unreported, unregistered) fishing,” Senaratne said. Had the […]
Hazard Warning
Mar 13, 2011 (LBO) – A Great Earthquake, one of the most powerful in recorded history, occurred off the coast of Honshu, North East Japan, on the 11th of March 2011. The previous Great Earthquake in Asia occurred off the coast of Sumatra, North West Indonesia, on the 26th of December 2004. Both were followed […]
Quick Trigger
March 13, 2011 (AFP) – Sri Lankan immigration authorities detained a Pakistani journalist with the same name as the man who staged an abortive car bomb attack in New York’s Times Square last year, officials said Sunday. Faisal Shahzad, an Islamabad-based reporter, was allowed to enter the country to cover the World Cup after spending […]
Fear as Japan struggles with stricken nuke reactors
FUKUSHIMA, March 13, 2011 (AFP) – Japan battled a nuclear emergency Sunday in which the government said twin meltdowns may have taken place and that radiation had escaped from reactors at a quake-damaged atomic power plant. About 200,000 people have been evacuated from residential areas around the Fukushima No. 1 plant, 250 kilometres (120 miles) […]
Sri Lanka tea crops recover
Mar 11, 2011 (LBO) – Tea harvests from Sri Lanka’s main plantations areas have improved following a slump caused by bad weather which affected the first quarter ‘Western quality season’, brokers said. Unseasonal heavy rains had affected tea harvests especially on the western slopes of the island’s central hills which usually produce quality teas in […]
Sri Lanka may temporarily allow maize imports
Mar 11, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka may temporarily lift a 35 percent import tax on maize to prevent prices going higher and hurting the island’s poultry industry after floods destroyed a part of the domestic crop, an official said. Sri Lanka’s agriculture ministry has requested approval from the cabinet of ministers to cut taxes […]
Close Links
OTTAWA, March 9, 2011 (AFP) – An asylum seeker from Sri Lanka has been ordered deported over his links to an extremist Tamil separatist group, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board announced Wednesday. The man, whose identity cannot be revealed under Canadian law, came to Canada last year aboard the rickety cargo ship MV Sun Sea […]
Sri Lanka tea exporter presses for imports for blending
Mar 09, 2011 (LBO) – Finlays Colombo has urged Sri Lankan authorities to allow more tea imports for blending saying it could lose market share by not catering to growing consumer demand for multi-origin blended teas. Chairman Kumar Jayasuriya said the firm, part of the UK’s Swire group, has been lobbying along with other tea […]
Galleon Trial
NEW YORK, March 8, 2011 (AFP) – The trial of former hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam began Tuesday in New York with the painstaking selection of a jury in a case prosecutors see as an example of Wall Street corruption and greed. Sri Lankan-born Rajaratnam, 53, used insider information at his Galleon Group fund to […]
India car sales jump 23%
MUMBAI, March 9, 2011 (AFP) – Car sales in India jumped nearly 23 percent in February from a year earlier, industry data showed Wednesday, as customers snapped up new models in a booming auto market where loans are cheap. The Indian market, Asia’s third-largest, is projected to triple over the next decade to six million […]
Threat Assessment
TORONTO, March 7, 2011 (AFP) – A Tamil asylum seeker accused of extremist links for living in a former rebel-controlled area of Sri Lanka is not a threat to Canada, a tribunal ruled Monday. “The man’s work for the LTTE — Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam designated as a terrorist organization by Canada — was […]