Sri Lanka's 'green gold’ brings wealth, health and happiness

Updated 04 February 2018
Follow

Sri Lanka's 'green gold’ brings wealth, health and happiness

RIYADH: Sri Lanka, the fourth-largest tea producer in the world, is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the industry’s birth with the world’s largest “tea party.”

A “Global Ceylon Tea Party” was hosted at Sri Lankan missions worldwide, including its embassy in Riyadh, with government officials and tea industry representatives saluting tea’s place in the island’s history and modern economy.
Sri Lankan tea, known for generations as Ceylon tea, has a unique heritage. The industry that began as a diversification experiment in 1867 on just 19 acres of land has today expanded to supply 19 percent of global demand.
Known for its signature taste and aroma, Sri Lanka’s tea provides a major source of income for the country and is its leading employer. The island has a 5 percent share of global tea production and a 17 percent share of world tea exports.
Tea remains the backbone of the island’s economy, with annual export earnings averaging around $1.5 billion, or 15 percent of foreign exchange revenue.
With 65 percent of the export agricultural income, the tea industry contributes about 2 percent to the island’s gross domestic product. More than 2 million people are employed directly and indirectly, with 10 percent of the country’s population depending on “green gold” for its livelihood.
Sri Lanka was the first tea-producing country in the world to introduce national branding, with Ceylon tea linked to the lion logo. The brand remains a source of pride because of its global popularity and unmatchable quality.

Exceptional diversity
Although tea makes up almost 45 percent of all exports in value-added form, what makes Sri Lanka’s national product truly unique is not volume but exceptional diversity.
Tea plantations in Sri Lanka are categorized around three distinct elevations — high grown, medium grown and low grown. Teas are classified into seven agro-climatic regions, Nuwara Eliya, UdaPussellawa, Uva, Dimbulla, Kandy, Sabaragamuwa and Ruhuna, based on location.
Due to its diverse topography and climate, Sri Lanka produces an array of specialty teas with different flavors, aromas, strength, and color that are almost impossible to replicate.
Commercial secretary at the Sri Lankan Embassy in Riyadh, Gayan Rajapaksa, said the island’s tea was sold to the Saudi customers after blending it with tea from other countries.

High standards
Ceylon tea is also the cleanest tea in the world in terms of pesticide residues, according to the ISO Technical Committee responsible for quality assurance.
Sri Lanka was the first country to achieve the “Ozone Friendly Tea” label recognized under the Montreal Protocol Treaty and is the proud owner of the first Ethical Tea Brand of the World recognized by the UN Global Compact.
The lion trademark symbolizing pure Ceylon tea pre-packed in Sri Lanka has been registered in more than 100 countries by the Sri Lanka Tea Board, the government organization regulating and promoting the industry.
Retail packs that carry the trademark are guaranteed by the tea board to consist of 100 percent pure Ceylon tea pre-packed at source and conforming to standards set by the authorities.


Israel-Gaza war fuels record level of anti-Muslim hatred in Britain, monitoring group says

Police officers stand near a cordon at Manchester Victoria Station, in Manchester. (AFP)
Updated 7 min 54 sec ago
Follow

Israel-Gaza war fuels record level of anti-Muslim hatred in Britain, monitoring group says

  • The surge in hate incidents against Muslims due to Islamophobia has also been linked to the killing of three young girls in the northern English town of Southport last summer, Tell MAMA said

LONDON: The number of anti-Muslim incidents in Britain rose to a new high in 2024, according to data compiled by monitoring organization Tell MAMA, which said the war in Gaza had “super-fueled” online hate.
Tell MAMA said it verified 5,837 anti-Muslim hate cases — a mix of both online and in-person incidents — last year, compared with 3,767 cases the year before and 2,201 in 2022.
The organization’s data goes back to 2012 and is compiled using data-sharing agreements with police forces in England and Wales.
“The Middle East conflict super-fueled online anti-Muslim hate,” the group said in a statement, adding that “the Israel and Gaza War, the Southport murders and riots ... created a surge in anti-Muslim hate cases reported to Tell MAMA from 2023-2024.”
Its director Iman Atta described the surge as unacceptable and deeply concerning for the future.
Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) describes itself as an independent, non-governmental organization which works on tackling anti-Muslim hatred.
Separate data last week showed levels of hatred toward Jews across Britain have also rocketed to record levels in the wake of the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.
The surge in hate incidents against Muslims due to Islamophobia has also been linked to the killing of three young girls in the northern English town of Southport last summer, Tell MAMA said.
False reports spread on social media that the killer, who has since been sentenced to at least 52 years behind bars, was a radical Islamist migrant, leading to racist riots involving far-right and anti-immigration groups across the country.
“We urge the public to stand together against hatred and extremism, and we urge those in positions of influence and public authority to consider how their language risks stereotyping communities,” Atta said, calling for coordinated government action to tackle anti-Muslim hate.

 


US Catholic bishops sue Trump administration for halt in funding for refugee settlement

President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP)
Updated 28 min 13 sec ago
Follow

US Catholic bishops sue Trump administration for halt in funding for refugee settlement

  • The lawsuit said the government is attempting to “pull the rug out” from under the program, causing it longstanding damage

WASHINGTON: Catholic bishops sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its abrupt halt to funding of refugee resettlement, calling the action unlawful and harmful to newly arrived refugees and to the nation’s largest private resettlement program.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops says the administration, by withholding millions even for reimbursements of costs incurred before the sudden cut-off of funding, violates various laws as well as the constitutional provision giving the power of the purse to Congress, which already approved the funding.
The conference’s Migration and Refugee Services has sent layoff notices to 50 workers, more than half its staff, with additional cuts expected in local Catholic Charities offices that partner with the national office, the lawsuit said.
“The Catholic Church always works to uphold the common good of all and promote the dignity of the human person, especially the most vulnerable among us,” said Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the USCCB. “That includes the unborn, the poor, the stranger, the elderly and infirm, and migrants.” The funding suspension prevents the church from doing so, he said.
“The conference suddenly finds itself unable to sustain its work to care for the thousands of refugees who were welcomed into our country and assigned to the care of the USCCB by the government after being granted legal status,” Broglio said.
The conference is trying to keep the program going, but it’s “financially unsustainable,” he said, adding that it’s trying to hold the US government to its “moral and legal commitments.”
The conference is one of 10 national agencies, most of them faith-based, that serve refugees and that have been sent scrambling since receiving a Jan. 24 State Department letter informing them of an immediate suspension of funding pending a review of foreign-aid programs.
The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, notes that the resettlement program isn’t even foreign aid. It’s a domestic program to help newly arrived refugees — who arrive legally after being vetted overseas — meet initial needs such as housing and job placement.
“USCCB spends more on refugee resettlement each year than it receives in funding from the federal government, but it cannot sustain its programs without the millions in federal funding that provide the foundation of this private-public partnership,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit said the government is attempting to “pull the rug out” from under the program, causing it longstanding damage.
The lawsuit names the departments of State and Health and Human Services as well as their respective secretaries, Marco Rubio and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Both departments have roles in delegating resettlement work to the bishops conference.
There was no immediate reply in court from those departments.
The USCCB said it is still awaiting about $13 million in reimbursements for expenses prior to Jan. 24.
As of Jan. 25, it said, there were 6,758 refugees assigned by the government to USCCB’s care that had been in the country less than 90 days, the period of time for which they’re eligible for resettlement aid.
The conference said suspending the resettlement effort will only prolong the time it takes for refugees to find employment and become self-sufficient.
 

 


Trump moves to widen IVF access, risking conservative fury

Updated 49 min 58 sec ago
Follow

Trump moves to widen IVF access, risking conservative fury

PALM BEACH, United States: US President Donald Trump moved Tuesday to increase access to in vitro fertilization, a move likely to be welcomed by many Americans but which risks a backlash from conservatives and the religious right.
The Republican leader signed an executive order giving his advisers 90 days to find recommendations for protecting IVF access and “aggressively” reducing out-of-pocket and insurance costs for the treatment.
“My Administration recognizes the importance of family formation, and as a Nation, our public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children,” the order stated.
“Americans need reliable access to IVF and more affordable treatment options,” it continued.
Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, shortly after signing the order, that “I think the women and families, husbands, are very appreciative of it.”
The president — whose billionaire top donor and ally Elon Musk has had several children by IVF — has long held conflicting stances on reproductive rights.
He frequently boasts about appointing Supreme Court justices who ended federal protections for abortion access in 2022, a seismic move that made him a hero to the anti-abortion movement, which has driven conservative voters to the polls for decades.
But he drew fury from that same movement when, during last year’s presidential campaign, he announced that in a second term he would ensure free IVF, and claimed to be the “father of IVF.”
At the time Trump voiced worries that Republicans were out of step with voters on the issue.
Republicans are divided on fertility treatments such as IVF, with many hailing them as a boost to American families.
Others, with strong beliefs that life begins at conception, oppose IVF because the procedure can produce multiple embryos, not all of which get used.
Almost every Senate Republican voted against assuring IVF access in a vote in June last year — including then-Ohio senator JD Vance, now Trump’s vice president.
Reproductive rights activists had feared that the Supreme Court decision on abortion threatened IVF, especially after a court in Alabama last year ruled that frozen embryos could be considered people, leading to several clinics briefly pausing treatments.
Trump’s Democratic rival Kamala Harris had put reproductive rights at the heart of her election platform, warning that Trump’s moves on abortion also jeopardized access to fertility treatments.


Bayern score late to see off Celtic in Champions League

Updated 19 February 2025
Follow

Bayern score late to see off Celtic in Champions League

  • Bayern will face either their fellow German rivals Bayer Leverkusen or Spanish giants Atletico Madrid in the last 16

MUNICH, Germany: Bayern Munich secured their place in the last 16 of the Champions League with a 94th minute strike by Alphonso Davies on Tuesday to secure a 1-1 draw on the night and a 3-2 aggregate win.
Bayern will face either their fellow German rivals Bayer Leverkusen or Spanish giants Atletico Madrid in the last 16.
Celtic had led 1-0 since the 63rd minute and the Scottish side had been on the verge of taking the German giants to extra time and pulling off their first ever win in Germany.
But with Harry Kane off injured and time running out, Davies stepped up as Bayern’s savior, tapping in after Celtic keeper Kasper Schmeichel had kept out Leon Goretzka’s header.
Bayern went into this game 2-1 up from last week’s first leg at Celtic Park and seeking to stretch their unbeaten run to seven games in all competitions.
Bayern dominated possession in the first half but Celtic were more dangerous with at least three clear cut chances to score before the break.
Former Bayern Munich second-team player, Nicolas Kuehn beat Manuel Neuer but Raphael Guerreiro cleared off the line.
Moments later, Alistair Johnston flashed a dangerous ball across the Bayern goal. With Neuer stranded the ball flew just beyond Daizen Maeda.
Then Maeda missed a golden opportunity to put Celtic ahead. When Dayot Upamecano was forced into a stray pass, Kuehn led the surge forward and fed Maeda, who blazed over with Kuehn and Jota in support.
Bayern dominated the ball on a freezing night but suffered with a lack of quality in attack.
Serge Gnabry was wasteful while Kane sometimes cut an isolated figure, starved of service.
The England captain’s best chance saw him rattling the bar with a snapshot after Josip Stanisic picked him out from the right.
That would be Kane’s final action. The striker was withdrawn at half time, feeling the effects of an injury picked up against Bayer Leverkusen on Saturday.
Bayern upped the pressure after the break and fashioned a clear chance when Goretzka went clean through. Schmeichel, however, made a crucial stop to keep Celtic in the game.
Soon after, Celtic were in front. Maeda seized on a loose pass by Josip Stanisic and helped it on toward Kuehn. Min-Jae Kim reached the ball first but could not clear and Kuehn was able to take a touch and find the bottom corner.
It was a goal that shocked the Allianz Arena and threatened Bayern’s record of 20 European home games unbeaten. Celtic were delivering on coach Brendan Rodgers’ pre-match battle cry to show bravery.
Bayern sought an equalizer but Vincent Kompany’s side were reduced to long-range shots, with Schmeichel pulling off saves from Joshua Kimmich, Michael Olize and substitute Leroy Sane.
Celtic were moments away from inflicting Bayern’s first defeat by a Scottish team and taking the tie into extra-time but the game had a sting in the tail. Olize delivered a pinpoint cross that was met by Goretzka.
Schmeichel saved but Davies scrambled the rebound home off his shin to send Bayern through to the last 16.


The USAID shutdown is upending livelihoods for nonprofit workers, farmers and other Americans

Updated 19 February 2025
Follow

The USAID shutdown is upending livelihoods for nonprofit workers, farmers and other Americans

  • More than 80 percent of companies that have contracts with USAID are American, according to aid data company DevelopmentAid

WASHINGTON: There’s the executive in a US supply-chain company whose voice breaks while facing the next round of calls telling employees they no longer have jobs.
And a farmer in Missouri who grew up knowing that a world with more hungry people is a world that’s more dangerous.
And a Maryland-based philanthropy, founded by Jews who fled pogroms in Eastern Europe, is shutting down much of its more than 120-year-old mission.
Beyond the impact of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, some 14,000 agency employees and foreign contractors as well as hundreds of thousands of people receiving aid abroad — many American businesses, farms and nonprofits— say the cutoff of US money they are owed has left them struggling to pay workers and cover bills. Some face financial collapse.
US organizations do billions of dollars of business with USAID and the State Department, which oversee more than $60 billion in foreign assistance. More than 80 percent of companies that have contracts with USAID are American, according to aid data company DevelopmentAid.
President Donald Trump stopped payment nearly overnight in a Jan. 20 executive order freezing foreign assistance. The Trump administration accused USAID’s programs of being wasteful and promoting a liberal agenda.
USAID Stop-Work, a group tracking the impact, says USAID contractors have reported that they laid off nearly 13,000 American workers. The group estimates that the actual total is more than four times that.
Here are stories of some Americans whose livelihoods have been upended:
Crop innovation work facing closures
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign — a lab that works with processers, food manufacturers and seed and fertilizer companies to expand soybean usage in 31 countries — is set to close in April unless it gets a last-minute reprieve.
Peter Goldsmith, director and principal investigator at the Soybean Innovation Lab, said the group has helped open international markets to US farmers and made the crop more prevalent in Africa.
For Goldsmith, that kind of steady partnership built on trade and US foreign aid offers the best way to wield US influence, he said.
Goldsmith said innovation labs at other land grant universities also are closing. Without them, Goldsmith worries about what will happen in the countries where they worked — what other actors may step in, or whether conflict will result.
“It’s a vacuum,” he said. “And what will fill that vacuum? It will be filled. There’s no doubt about it.”
A refugee mission is imperiled
For nonprofits working to stabilize populations and economies abroad, the United States was not only the biggest humanitarian donor but an inextricable part of the whole machinery of development and humanitarian work.
Among them, HIAS, a Jewish group aiding refugees and potential refugees, is having to shut down “almost all” of its more than 120-year-old mission.
The Maryland-based philanthropy was founded by Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe. Its mission in recent decades has broadened to include keeping vulnerable people safe in their home country so they don’t have to flee, said HIAS President Mark Hetfield.
Hetfield said the first Trump administration saw the wisdom of that effort. Hias experienced some of its biggest growth during Trump’s first term as a result.
But now, Trump’s shutdown of foreign assistance severed 60 percent of HIAS’s funding, overnight. The group immediately started furloughs among its 2,000 direct employees, operating in 17 states and 20 countries.
The administration calls it a “suspension,” rather than a termination, Hetfield said. “But we have to stop paying our leases, stop paying our employees.”
“It’s not a suspension,” Hetfield said. “That’s a lie.”
Tracking USAID’s effectiveness may fall by the wayside
Keith Ives, a Marine veteran who fell in love with data, has a small Denver-area nonprofit that brought a numbers-crunching relentlessness to his USAID-funded mission of testing the effectiveness of the agency’s programs.
For Ives’ teams, that’s included weighing and measuring children in Ethiopia who are getting USAID support, testing whether they’re chunkier and taller than kids who aren’t. (On average they are.)
Last week, Ives was planning to tell half his full-time staff of 28 that they would be out of a job at the end of the month. Ives’ Causal Design nonprofit gets 70 percent of its work from USAID.
At first, “it was an obsession over how can I fix this,” said Ives, who described his anxiety in the first days of the cutoff as almost paralyzing. “There must be a magic formula. ... I’m just not thinking hard enough, right?“
Now, Ives goes through all-staff call after call, breaking bad news on the impact of USAID’s shutdown. Being transparent with them, it turned out, was the best he could do.
He looks at the US breaking partnerships and contracts in what had been USAID’s six-decade aim of boosting national security by building alliances and crowding out adversaries.
For the US now, “I think for years to come, when we try to flex, I think people are going to go, ‘Yeah, but like, remember 2025?’” Ives said. “’You could just be gone tomorrow.’”
A supplier faces ruin
It takes expertise, cash flow and hundreds of staff to get USAID-funded food and goods to remote and often ill-regulated places around the globe.
For US companies doing that, the administration’s only follow-up to the stop-work orders it sent out after the money freeze have been termination notices — telling them some contracts are not only paused, but ended.
Almost all of those companies have been kept silent publicly, for fear of drawing the wrath of the Trump administration or endangering any court challenges.
Speaking anonymously for those reasons, an executive of one supply-chain business that delivers everything from hulking equipment to food describes the financial ruin facing those companies.
While describing the next round of layoff calls to be made, the executive, who is letting hundreds of workers go in total, sobs.
Farmers may lose market share
Tom Waters, a seventh-generation farmer who grows corn, soybean and wheat near Orrick, Missouri, thinks about his grandfather when he reads about what is happening with USAID.
“I’ve heard him say a hundred times, ‘People get hungry, they’ll fight,’” Waters said.
Feeding people abroad is how the American farmer stabilizes things across the world, he says. “Because we’re helping them keep people’s bellies full.”
USAID-run food programs have been a dependable customer for US farmers since the Kennedy administration. Legislation mandates US shippers get a share of the business as well.
Even so, American farm sales for USAID humanitarian programs are a fraction of overall US farm exports. And politically, US farmers know that Trump has always taken care to buffer the impact when his tariffs or other moves threaten demand for US farm goods.
US commodity farmers generally sell their harvests to grain silos and co-ops, at a per bushel rate. While the impact on Waters’ farm is not yet clear, farmers worry any time something could hit demand and prices for their crops or give a foreign competitor an opening to snatch away a share of their market permanently.
Still, Waters doesn’t think the uncertainty is eroding support for Trump.
“I really think people, the Trump supporters are really going to have patience with him, and feel like this is what he’s got to do,” he said.