Free Republic

Ibrahim Didi, right, the minister of fisheries and agriculture in the Maldives, signs a document calling on all countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions ahead of a major climate change conference in December. (Mohammed Seeneen/Associated Press) Cabinet ministers in the Maldives held an underwater meeting Saturday to draw attention to the threat global warming poses to the lowest-lying nation on earth. President Mohammed Nasheed and members of his cabinet wore scuba gear as they arrived for the meeting in a lagoon off the island of Girifushi. They sat at a table anchored to the sand on the floor of...

Maldives Cabinet Meets Below Waves to Highlight Climate Change Threat By Steve Herman New Delhi 17 October 2009 In an effort to highlight climate change, the Cabinet of the government of the Maldives, an Indian island nation, has held a meeting under water. Meetings of government ministers can sometimes be a dry affair. That certainly was not the case during the latest gathering of the Cabinet of the Maldives. President Mohamed Nasheed and 11 of his government ministers, plus the vice president and Cabinet secretary, donned scuba gear and plunged six meters below the shimmering turquoise surface of an Indian...

Navy eyes Maldives - Counter to China’s ‘string of pearls’ plan SUJAN DUTTA New Delhi, Aug. 19: A tiny pearl of an island with a former World War II airbase in the Maldives is now the Indian Navy’s strategic object of desire. Defence minister A.K. Antony’s visit to the Maldives with a high-level team for three days starting tomorrow will not name Gan, or Addu Atoll, where the coral island is located, just south of the equator. But the navy wants a permanent presence in Gan for its surveillance aircraft, along with a presence of its ships and other aircraft...

It may be known as a tropical paradise, an archipelago of 1,200 coral islands in the Indian Ocean. But the traditional image of the Maldives hides a dirty secret: the world's biggest rubbish island. snip . . . Meanwhile, tourism has made the Maldives the richest country in South Asia in terms of GDP a head - which is around $4,500 (£3,100) - though that wealth is thinly spread. snip . . . Environment issues are a major political issue in the Maldives, not least because its 300,000 people face being the first to be submerged under rising sea levels...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2008/s08120046.htm Monday, December 8, 2008 Maldives: reform in politics but not in religious liberty By Elizabeth Kendal World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC) Special to ASSIST News Service AUSTRALIA (ANS) -- On Saturday 29 November, Maldives' Ministry of Islamic Affairs announced that it would block a Dhivehi and English language website which it claimed was promoting Christianity amongst Maldivians. When Minivan News, an independent news source in Maldives, sought to question Islamic Affairs Minister Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari over the censorship and the contents of the website, he refused to...

The MSN has not been reporting this, however many already know about the challenge in federal court to Obama's "natural born" citizenship status. It was filed in Pennsylvania Eastern District Court on August 21, 2008. Case Number 2:2008cv04083 BERG v. OBAMA et al The information on this case can be found on justia.com, specifically: http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/pennsylvania/paedce/2:2008cv04083/281573/ Open each link from that page to download or view each pdf file. There is a youtube video out where Mr. Berg is talking about important issues in this case. His part of the segment begins after about 1:20 minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA6_k3NtXZs

Boy scout saves leader of the Maldives By KRISHAN FRANCIS, Associated Press Writer The president of the Maldives was saved from assassination Tuesday when a boy scout grabbed the knife of an attacker who had jumped out of a crowd greeting the leader, an official said. President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was not hurt, but his shirt was ripped when the attacker tried to stab him before the boy and security guards intervened during the event on the small island of Horafushi, said government spokesman Mohammad Shareef. "This fellow in the crowd with a knife in his hand attempted to stab...

A QUICK-thinking boy scout has thwarted an assassination bid against the president of the Maldives. Officials said Mohamed Murshid, 20, tried to plunge a knife into President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's stomach, but Asia's longest serving president was unhurt thanks to Mahamed Jaisham, 15, who wrestled with the attacker before he was detained.

U.S. to Offer Turkey Help on PKK The U.S. is to offer Turkey a package of measures to dissuade Ankara from mounting a large-scale military incursion into Iraq to attack PKK Kurdish guerrillas, who have killed scores of Turkish soldiers in recent weeks. Ahead of a meeting in Washington on Monday between President George W. Bush and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, U.S. officials said Ankara would have to get concrete American help to combat the PKK, which has bases in northern Iraq from where it frequently launches attacks into Turkey. “Erdogan has to go back with the...

While vacationing tycoons and bikini-clad Hollywood superstars blissfully sipped drinks on the Maldives' secluded white beaches, an Islamic revolution fueled by preachers trained in Pakistan and the Middle East was brewing. On Sept. 29, the two faces of the Maldives collided when a homemade bomb exploded in a park in the capital, Male, wounding 12 tourists, threatening the critical resort industry and sending the clear message that even this remote corner of paradise is not immune to terrorism. The attack, and a bloody confrontation days later between police and masked Islamic extremists armed with harpoons, stunned this Indian Ocean nation...

State-run television in the Maldives has been ordered not to employ women who cover their heads and to stop praising Palestinian suicide bombers, a government minister told AFP. The measures are part of a package of restrictions designed to stem a feared spread of militant Islam that could damage the Indian Ocean archipelago's status as a top destination for rich tourists. "We have instructed Television Maldives to stop hiring female anchors who wear headscarves and not show fully veiled women, even in news reports," Information Minister Mohamed Nasheed said in an interview late Tuesday. He said state-run television had also...

Al Qaeda 'Re-Emerging' in Pakistan Sanctuaries The U.S. military said Tuesday it expected Al Qaeda to continue its "re-emergence" in sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas from where it supported attacks in Afghanistan. Sanctuary was provided to Al Qaeda and Taliban rebels after Islamabad signed a peace deal with militants in a desperate attempt to quell the unrest in its federally administered areas in September 2006, a U.S. military official said. The militants called off the deal in July this year after Pakistani security forces raided a radical mosque in Islamabad where rebels had massed. Dozens were killed in those...

Maldives clears out 'extremist' mosque By Ajay Makan in Male and Peter Foster, South Asia Correspondent Last Updated: 2:30am BST 09/10/2007 The Maldives government has moved to tackle the rising threat of Islamist radicalism as 300 troops surrounded and then cleared an illegal mosque that had been accused of fomenting extremism on the paradise islands. The move came a week after a British honeymoon couple were badly burned in the Maldives's first ever terrorist bomb attack which has threatened to damage the international tourist industry on which the islands' economy depends. A soldier was taken seriously wounded and a policeman...

“Gang Rapists” Given Eight Months Exile By Paul Roberts in London July 19, 2007 Four men who had sex with a twelve year old girl after breaking into her home in January have been cleared of rape. A judge found the girl from Kurendhoo, Lhaviyani atoll, had consented to have sex with the men after they smashed her bedroom window with an axe. The judge sentenced the four men to eight months exile from Kurendhoo for sex outside marriage. The sentence apparently contradicts a government commitment in May that child sex offenders would be imprisoned rather than banished. On January...

Aniya Arrested Over Article “Against Islam” By Will Jordan in Male' May 3, 2007 Aishath Aniya was arrested on Thursday morning in connection with an article she wrote criticising the wearing of the veil. She was apprehended by police at around 9:40am outside the offices of Minivan Daily newspaper as she parked her motorcycle. Aniya was lifted into the back of a police van and taken to Police Headquarters, before being transferred to the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs for questioning. She refused to answer questions without a lawyer present and arranged to return to the Supreme Council on Sunday...

The rally is intended to unify the region (Picture by Focusbangla) One of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's dreams came true when a South Asian car rally flagged off on Thursday from the south-east of Bangladesh.The rally - which organisers say is the first of its kind in the region - began from the resort town of Cox's Bazar. About 100 participants, including celebrities, sportsmen, government officials and journalists, packed 26 jeeps for the nearly 8,000km rally. They will travel through Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. 'Expand goodwill' The rally, which finishes in April, will take drivers...

Asia Rising Donald Rumsfeld infamously made a distinction between Old Europe and New Europe. He has been scored ever since for his sweeping and impolitic language, but he wasn't sweeping enough: In geopolitical terms, all of Europe is old, the world's most tourist-friendly museum piece. For the future of high-stakes U.S. diplomacy and of great-power politics, look no further than Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S. It is Asia that should occupy an outsized place in our strategic thinking, and it is Europe that should be the relative afterthought, not the other way around. The media and foreign-policy...

MALE, Maldives (AP) - Former President Clinton has canceled his trip to tsunami-hit areas of Maldives because of exhaustion, a U.N. official said Saturday. Cherie Hart, spokesman for the U.N. Development Program and coordinator of Clinton's visit, said the former president, who underwent a heart bypass operation in September, was not sick. "He's plain pooped and he wants to slow the schedule down," Hart said. Clinton, who recently was appointed U.N. special envoy for tsunami recovery, will keep his scheduled appointments in the Maldives, but will not tour areas devastated by December's giant wave.

Kenyan newspaper lauds Pope for opposing British 'invasion' of Maldives NAIROBI, April 4 (AFP) - A leading Kenyan daily on Monday eulogized the late Pope John Paul II as a fierce foe of armed conflict, especially the war in Iraq, but raised eyebrows by rewriting history to laud his opposition to Britain's "invasion" of the Maldives islands. In an apparent computer-generated spelling error, the Standard newspaper mistakenly praised the pontiff for opposing a non-existent British war with the Maldives instead of his criticism of Britain's 1982 conflict with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. "He may have...

Inside a comic-book coup Why the Maldivian president needs to be eternally grateful to an unsung Indian frigate captain SHEKHAR GUPTA Posted online: Saturday, March 19, 2005 at 0213 hours IST Earlier this week some newspapers carried a small obituary notice, announcing the demise of Vice-Admiral Srinivasa Varadachari V. Gopalachari of the Indian Navy. The name, the face under the naval hat, figured in my memory somewhere and, sure enough, a little checking confirmed that he was the master of frigate INS Godavari when it went chasing the Maldives coup leaders in the Indian Ocean in 1988. He died last...