Important News

Sri Lanka loses 30-40% of its vegetable harvest
Sunday, May 13, 2007, 13:59 GMT, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

Vegetable consumption by Sri Lankans is as low as 100 grams per head per day. May 13, Colombo: Around 30 to 40 percent of Sri Lanka's vegetable harvest is wasted annually, say figures from the Post Harvest Technology Institute of Anuradhapura.
The amount of vegetables wasted annually amounts to 165,000 to 200,000 metric tons. Sri Lanka produces around 500,000 metric tons of vegetables annually.
Vegetable consumption by Sri Lankans is as low as 100 grams per head per day, and the Post Harvest Technology Institute says the nutritional status of the people can be increased if the wastage is managed.
The Institute attempts to promote the use of plastic boxes instead of the popular poly sacks to transport vegetables so as to minimize post-harvest wastage.

Tiger air attack costs Shell 700,000 dollars
[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 May 2007, 03:22 GMT]
Sri Lankan unit of Royal Dutch Shell suffered damages of at least 700,000 dollars in an air attack by a Tamil Tiger aircraft last month, AFP quoted the company as saying Saturday. A second aircraft bombed an oil storage site scored a direct hit and destroying a storage tank holding heavy oil, officials told AFP. Two LTTE light aircraft bombed the two sites near the capitol, Colombo, on April 28.
Two bombs exploded at the Anglo-Dutch company's storage facility on the outskirts of Colombo, damaging one of its four storage terminals and disabling its fire-fighting operations, the company said.
"There was big damage to our fire-fighting facility and we estimate it will cost us in excess of 75 million rupees (700,000 dollars) to put things back," AFP quoted Shell's Sri Lankan country director, Hassan Madani, as saying.
The damage caused by the attack, along with heavy monsoon rains, disrupted distribution of supplies for ten days, with some households running out of cooking gas in Colombo and its suburbs.
"Supplies are now being gradually restored," Madani said.
In the same attack, another LTTE aircraft dropped bombs at a nearby oil storage depot which is jointly owned by the Indian Oil Corp and Sri Lanka's state-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corp.
Though neither of the two companies that own the oil storage depot have announced the cost of the damage, officials at the site said that one of the bombs scored a direct hit and destroyed a storage tank holding heavy oil.
Shell acquired a 51 percent stake in the Colombo Gas Company when it was privatised in 1995.

US military sales to Sri Lanka up from $1.4m to $60.8m
[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 May 2007, 18:08 GMT]

The Center for Defense Information (CDI), an independent think-tank based in Washington D.C which provides expert analysis on various components of U.S. national security, international security and defense policy, said in a report that Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to Sri Lanka from US increased 40 fold, from $1.4m in 2006 to $60.8m in 2007.US export figures The report points out that Sri Lanka, where there are "new reports of children serving in government armed forces or government-linked paramilitary groups," is also a beneficiary of increase in sales
Excerpts from the report follow:
In 13 of the 25 countries, children under age 18 have been forcibly recruited into both government and non-state armed groups, have taken a direct part in hostilities as members of armed groups, or have been forced into support roles for armed groups. Since 2001, the U.S. government has supplied 11 of these 13 countries with military assistance.
In nine of these 13 countries, children were recruited or used as soldiers by government security forces or governmentsponsored armed groups.3 Unlike last year, the State Department reported no evidence that children were recruited into government armed forces in Paraguay or Rwanda, and included new reports of children serving in government armed forces or government-linked paramilitary groups in Sri Lanka.
Of the nine countries in which children were recruited or used as soldiers by government security forces or governmentsponsored armed groups, the U.S. government has supplied eight with military assistance since 2001.