President Dr Mohamed Waheed Hassan’s visit to India continued to garner international media attention, with interviews to NDTV, CNN-IBN, Times Now, New York Radio, Times of India, Hindustan Times, and UK’s The Daily Telegraph.
Few substantive details have emerged regarding the content of the meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Maldivian President Dr Mohamed Waheed Hassan, who is in India on Singh’s invitation.
The statistics in the 13th State of the World’s Mothers revealed that the Maldives needs to improve on reproductive health and access to contraceptives, increase economic and political participation of women and introduce mechanisms to curb rising malnutrition.
Thai newspaper The Nation has reported that Pruksa, Thailand’s largest real estate developer, is withdrawing its investment in the Maldives after suffering a US$3.2 million loss.
GMR has offered to exempt Maldivian nationals from paying the contentious Airport Development Charge (ADC), in a bid to end a legal and contractual stalemate that threatens to bankrupt the Maldives Airport Company Limited (MACL) and deprive the government of almost all airport revenue.
“When an individual finds courage in another, and the people come out to enforce their will, no one can challenge that will. Not even the police, the military or judges,” said ousted President Mohamed Nasheed, at the launch of his campaign for his party’s presidential primary.
“80-90 percent of the problem can be sorted by eliminating standing water where mosquitoes breed,” explains the ‘Mosquito Lady’, Trudy Rilling-Collins, as she works to make Boda Huraa inhospitable to dengue carrying Aedes aegypti.
With government revenue plunging and a 24 percent rise in expenditure, Parliament’s Financial Committee has projected that the Maldives’ budget deficit will reach 27 percent of the GDP by the end of year 2012, a 172 percent increase on earlier forecasts.
Climate change activists made giant onions to highlight impact of climate change on food security in the Maldives, while Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) members waded into Malé city lagoon to call attention to the city’s vulnerability to flooding.