Category: Other
Asia remembers day ocean unleashed its fury
BANDA ACEH, December 26, 2009 (AFP) – People across Asia paused Saturday to remember the day five years ago when an undersea earthquake unleashed a devastating wave that killed more than 220,000 people. A solemn day of prayers and remembrance to mark one of the world’s worst natural disasters was held in Indonesia’s Aceh province, […]
Graft Wave
December 26, 2009 (AFP) – Nearly half a billion dollars in tsunami aid for Sri Lanka is unaccounted for and over 600 million dollars has been spent on projects unrelated to the disaster, an anti-corruption watchdog said Saturday.Berlin-based Transparency International demanded an audit of the money received by the Sri Lankan government to help victims […]
Arms Allegation
SINGAPORE, December 25, 2009 (AFP) – A Singapore opposition party member has been extradited to the United States where he stands accused of trying to supply arms to Sri Lanka’s defeated Tamil Tiger rebels, according to a report Friday.Balldev Naidu, 47, a businessman and co-founder of the Reform Party, was extradited on December 18, the […]
Sri Lanka tea earnings seen holding up despite lower crop
Dec 24, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tea production this year will be lower than in 2008 because of drought and a strike but earnings should match last year’s as prices have been good, a senior official said. “Prices have been good – at least 10-12 percent more than last year.” Sri Lankan tea prices […]
Money Wave
RATHGAMA, December 23, 2009 (AFP) – Billions of dollars were pledged after the 2004 Asian tsunami to help people like Pradeepa Niroshani who waited in vain for money to rebuild her destroyed home. Five years after the disaster, the government in Sri Lanka is under pressure from a leading anti-corruption group to account for nearly […]
Sri Lanka farmers get mobile phone trade service
Dec 23, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s top celco Dialog Telekom is offering a trading platform based on short message services (SMS) that can help farmers to sell their produce and create a forward market for agriculture produce, officials said. Phones that don’t have the unicode function will deliver SMS’s in ‘Singlish’, he said. Singlish […]
India tightens tourist visa rules: official
NEW DELHI, December 23, 2009 (AFP) – India has tightened its rules for long-term tourist visas, officials said Wednesday, in a move that is causing confusion for travellers and will affect thousands of foreigners in the country.Under previous rules, tourists on five or 10-year visas were required to leave the country every 180 days.But many […]
Sri Lanka could see tea prices easing next year
Dec 23, 2009 (LBO) – Tea export countries like Sri Lanka could see prices easing next year as better weather improves crops and reduces the global shortfall that drove prices higher in 2009, the Food and Agriculture Organisation has forecast.Tea prices reached a record high in 2009, but should ease next year as weather improves […]
‘s plastics
HAWTHORNE, December 22, 2009 (AFP) – Frederic Scheer is biding his time, convinced that by 2013 the price of oil will be so high that his bio-plastics, made from vegetables and plants, will be highly marketable.Cereplast, which has 25 employees in California and in Indiana, has accumulated a series of patents for the technology it […]
Italian winemakers first to invest in India: company
NEW DELHI, December 22, 2009 (AFP) – Two Italian winemakers have become the first foreign producers to invest directly in India, seeking to tap into a growing taste for the drink in the emerging market, their Indian partner said Tuesday.Riona Wines, based in the western Indian state of Maharastra, the country’s grape-growing centre, told AFP […]
Refugee Drama
JAKARTA, December 20, 2009 (AFP) – Fifteen of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers who spent weeks refusing to get off the boat that rescued them near Indonesia have left the country, a foreign ministry official said Sunday.“They left Indonesia yesterday.Two were flown to Australia and the other 13 were taken to an evacuation centre in […]
Iran Bound
SEOUL, December 21, 2009 (AFP) – A planeload of weapons from North Korea seized in Bangkok this month was bound for Iran, a newspaper report said Monday, citing documents obtained by arms trafficking experts.US Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair had said last week that the 35-tonne cargo, shipped in defiance of UN sanctions on […]