Two motorcyclists were involved in an accident last night on Boduthakurufaanu Magu.
According to police, the accident occured near the track stadium at 9.15 pm.
One of the victims, 20, had a fractured leg and the other, 23, had minor injuries. Both are now being treated at Indria Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH), and police are investigating the case.
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(0)Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has commended President Nasheed on his efforts at the recent Copenhagen summit.
Speaking to TVM, Rudd said Nasheed “did a good job” in representing small island nations. He also referred to Nasheed’s statement climate change was not only a Maldivian problem, and that it would affect the whole world.
Australia is a key partner in the development of the Maldives and Rudd promised his country’s help in assisting the Maldives to deal with climate change.
(0)Dislikes(0)President Nasheed returns to Male’ today after playing his part in the United Nations Forum for Climate Change held in Copenhagen.
While the president played a pivotal role in the summit, media across the world reported that many countries present at the conference showed little respect for the work done by President Nasheed and other leaders.
The president is will give a press conference later today.
(0)Dislikes(0)The power station at Gaaf Dhaalu Madaveli was broken into last night and Rf 126,000 was stolen, reports Miadhu.
The island councillor Faarish Muneeru said the money was stolen from the station’s safe at around midnight last night. He also said there was a person on duty in the control room at the time.
Police said the matter is being investigated but so far no one has been arrested in relation to the theft.
(0)Dislikes(0)Parents on the island of Maamendhoo in Laamu atoll have accused an islander of practicing sorcery on school girls to induce fainting spells and hysteria.
Speaking to Minivan News, the parents said girls in grades nine and 10 began experiencing problems after a game of bashi earlier this year.
“Our children haven’t been able to study ever since,” said a father of two girls in the island school. “They suffer aches all over their body and they faint and have to be carried home.”
He added that some parents have transferred their children to the school in nearby Maavah, while the lives of his own daughters had been “destroyed”.
Five or six girls were believed to have been affected, he said, and often had to be carried by ambulance to the health centre after fainting in class.
In May, he continued, the parents decided that a man from Thaa atoll Thimarafushi, married to a woman living in Maamendhoo, was responsible for the trouble.
The man was taken into custody and investigated after the parents lodged complaints with police. A police media spokesperson confirmed that police had investigated a sorcery case in Maamendhoo.
The father said police have since informed the parents that the case has been sent to the prosecutor general’s office.
Apart from fainting spells, he said, his daughters went into trances, became hysterical and “talked gibberish”.
The mother of a 16-year-old girl said she had to take her daughter home from school almost every day after she started fainting.
“Parents are afraid to send their children to school now,” she said.
Both parents said all the girls had been tested at the regional hospital in Gan as well as hospitals in Male’, but the doctors said there was nothing wrong with them.
“I don’t believe it can be anything other than fanditha,” said the father.
He said the parents discovered who was responsible after the alleged fanditha man (sorcerer) offered to cure the girls.
“He came to our house and said I can cure them, it’s no problem,” he said, adding the man concocted a drink with zamzam water and a variety of flowers.
When he confronted the fanditha man after growing suspicious of his proffered cures, he said, the man admitted to practicing sorcery on the girls.
“He said to me there’s nothing I can do to stop him and that he’ll do whatever he likes,” he said.
The parents also accused the island authorities of failing to help them cure their children.
Maamendhoo councilor Abubakuru Hussein said the authorities had done everything they could to provide assistance, including taking the girls to hospital and covering the travel expenses of an investigations team from the education ministry.
The team, consisting of a counselor and a religious scholar, determined that the girls were “faking it” to avoid studying, noting that all the girls involved were poor students.
“I don’t believe he knows the kind of fanditha to do this to so many girls,” Abubakuru said.
The councilor speculated that a likelier explanation for the fainting was the smell of chemicals emanating from a fibre factory near the school.
“One parent is working tirelessly to force the [fanditha] man out,” he said. “I have been telling him we don’t have the authority to search people for talismans.”
(0)Dislikes(0)Maldives is set to graduate from a ‘least developed country’ (LDC) to a ‘developing country’ by December next year, according to the Minister of Economics and Development, Mohamed Rasheed.
Speaking at a press conference, Rasheed said that at a recent World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Geneva a ministerial envoy had discussed many issues regarding the transition.
Rasheed said that graduating from a LDC would open the Maldivian economy to many opportunities, particularly the chance to broaden its activities from its staples of tourism, fishing and construction.
“After graduation the country needs to keep improving the economy,” he said. “This is only possible through foreign investment and the reinvestment of wealth.”
Rasheed explained that under the WTO’s framework, countries graduating would receive a five year aid package of US$1.5 million annually.
Rasheed also addressed the issue of foreign investment and international trade, both key factors he claimed would stimulate the Maldivian economy.
Describing one method of boosting foreign investment, Rasheed recounted a meeting with the Swiss minister for economics and trade that led to a tax agreement whereby Swiss companies investing in the Maldives will only have to pay Maldivian taxes on that investment, making them exempt from high Swiss taxes.
(0)Dislikes(0)Maldives Customs Service has intercepted over five kilograms of the drug ketamine at Male’ International Airport in the country’s largest drug bust this year.
Director of Intelligence and Special Operations Abdul Rasheed Ibrahim said the drugs were found in the luggage of an Indian national, Abdullrasulhan Abdulmukthalif, concealed inside a cardboard box with a hidden compartment.
Customs officers noticed irregularities when they scanned the box, and discovered 29 packets of suspected narcotics, carefully wrapped in polythene.
Lab tests confirmed the substance as 5.09kg of ketamine with trace amounts of cocaine, Ibrahim said, the first recorded case of ketamine being illegally brought into the country.
Ketamine is commonly used as a dissociative anesthetic in both humans and animals. Although a regulated drug, it is widely used as an illegal recreational narcotic.
Abdulmukthalif was travelling on Sri Lankan flight UL507 travelled to Male’ on the 15 December from Chennai via Trivandrum and Colombo.
Customs officers said Abdulmukthalif’s itinerary revealed that his final destination was Jakarta, a trip he had made four separate times, and each time he allegedly took a cardboard box on behalf of a friend from Chennai.
Ibrahim said although the street value of the drugs was Rf 6.5 million, he did believe the final destination of the drugs was the Maldives.
This was the 12th incident of illegal narcotics transportation this year discovered by customs officials, he said, adding that the total seized now stood at 12.56 kilograms (a combined street value of Rf 11 million).
(0)Dislikes(0)A group of people who went fishing from Fulhadhoo in Baa Atoll found an 8.5 kilogram piece of ambergris thought to be worth up to one million Rf, reports Haveeru.
Abdul Kareem Mohamed, 47, found the piece of ambergris whilst on a fishing trip to Baa Undoodhoo. Mohamed and the dhoni crew who discovered the ambergris are currently in Male’ trying to sell it.
Even though many modern chemicals are used in the manufacture of perfumes, ambergris remains popular and fetches a very high price in the market.
One of the largest pieces of ambergris found was the “bark splendid of Dunedin” New Zealand, which was found in 1883 and wieghed in at 983 lb( 446.82 Kg). It was sold for $250,000.
(0)Dislikes(0)Health Ministry officials have warned of an increase in the spread of swine flu in the coming months.
Director General of Health Services Dr Ibrahim Yasir said there would be more opportunities for the spread of the disease with many people returning to the Maldives after the school holidays.
Dr Ahmed Jamsheed from the Centre of Community Health and Disease Control said it was important to keep children away from school if they had flu symptoms.
The Health Ministry also said plans were being made to further increase awareness about the disease.
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