Affidavit filed by the Chief Wildlife Warden, Assam in the matter of news item titled "the last feral horses in India" appearing in Mongabay, November 5, 2024. The matter relates to the critically endangered status of feral horses in the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park as well as of smuggling of these …
the Sri Lankan government gazetted regulations for the import of genetically modified (gm) food on August 3, 2006, making labelling and pre-import approvals mandatory. The rules will be enforced from January 1, 2007. This is a marked change from the government's earlier plan to ban gm food completely. The ban …
LTTE's water war: In the last week of July, the Sri Lankan army launched a ground offensive against Tamil tiger rebels to regain control over a key water reservoir in the northeastern city of Trincomalee district. The battle is considered to be the fiercest since the 2002 cease-fire agreement. Till …
power boost: To overcome power shortage, Pakistan has recently given approval to the country's five independent power companies to set up plants at an estimated cost of us $1 billion. These power producers
sri lanka and India recently agreed to expand trade and investment ties in the seventh round of negotiations under the proposed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (cepa) in Colombo. cepa is an effort to strengthen the Free Trade Agreement (fta) between the two countries but it is already running into trouble …
all Sri Lankan factories manufacturing edible oil for export to India have shut down production in protest against India's decision to restrict the product's duty-free import. Local officials, however, are hopeful of a settlement. On June 4, India announced controls on vanaspati imports from Sri Lanka, saying only the state-run …
lankan fuel crisis: Sri Lanka recently reached a settlement with the Lanka Indian Oil Corporation (LIOC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Indian Oil Corporation, to resolve a fuel crisis in the country. LIOC was unable to import any fuel from India unless the Lankan government paid at least Rs 1 billion …
waste power: The California State Assembly has recently approved a law to increase the production of renewable energy in the state. The bill, ab 1969, will allow public water and wastewater agencies to sell environment-friendly energy to electrical companies, which they produce in the form of hydro-electricity, solar and biogas …
short of gunnybags: The shortage of gunny bags at government wheat procurement centres in several districts of Pakistan has forced farmers to sell their produce to private buyers below the support price. The rates of wheat dropped from Rs 425 to Rs 380 in the open market after the government …
It is almost unbelievable: the setting up of a Sri Lanka Institute of Environmentalist. The state-owned Central Environmental Authority (cea) set up this institute after a summary meeting with a few environmentalists and officials. It paid no heed to the protests of environmental activists (see p55). According to a note …
lankan labour: The Wages Board of the Sri Lankan labour department is promoting child labour, if a government notice published in Sri Lankan newspaper is to be believed. The notice, which relates the wages of labourers who come under the Wages Board Act, was taken out under the name of …
feizal samath Colombo all foreign-aided ngos operating in Sri Lanka have been put under the scanner. A Parliamentary Select Committee, constituted by all political party-representatives, will examine if the ngos are involved in any illegal activities and keep a vigil on their source of funding. The move has come close …
at midnight on April 14, 2006, clocks in Sri Lanka were set back by 30 minutes, thereby returning to the time that the country followed until May 1996. The government's directive to reverse the clocks came soon after Sri Lanka ended its April 13-14 annual celebrations of the Sinhala and …
The 26 December 2004 tsunami caused widespread destruction and contamination of coastal aquifers across southern Asia. Seawater filled domestic open dug wells and also entered the aquifers via direct infiltration during the first flooding waves and later as ponded seawater infiltrated through the permeable sands that are typical of coastal …
smoke threat: Public health in Meherpur district of Bangladesh is at high risk from heavy vehicular emissions due to the use of adulterated fuel. Cases of respiratory and cardiac diseases have increased in recent years. It is alleged that kerosene is used to adulterated petrol. Consumers complain that their vehicles …
pipeline blast: Suspected tribal rebels recently blew up a gas pipeline in Pakistan. This led to the closure of the nearby Uch power plant, which is owned jointly by the US and the uk, for the second time in January 2006. The blast damaged a 60 cm-diameter pipeline in the …
scientists in Sri Lanka have found a new way to safely dispose plastic materials. They enlisted the services of a bacterium and a fungus that feed on hydrocarbons to break down polymer chains in polythene products. An estimated 60 million tonnes of polyethylene are produced annually the world over. But …
