COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Cash-strapped Sri Lanka on Sunday extended school closures for one week because there isn't enough fuel for teachers and parents to get children to classrooms, and the energy minister appealed to the country's expatriates to send money home through banks to finance new oil purchases.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka is sending two government ministers to Russia to negotiate for fuel — one of the necessities nearly exhausted as a result of the Indian Ocean nation's economic collapse.
MALE, Maldives (AP) — Maldives police arrested six people after religious fundamentalists disrupted and chased away participants in a government event marking International Yoga Day on Tuesday.
The Indian and British ambassadors were among those attending the event at the national football stadium in Male, the capital of the Indian Ocean archipelago, when Islamic fundamentalists carrying flags and placards entered the field shouting “God is Great” in Arabic.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A South African court is to rule on efforts to stop British oil giant Shell from conducting any further seismic surveys in the country’s Indian Ocean waters to explore for offshore oil and gas deposits.
TOKYO (AP) — Leaders of the U.S., Japan, Australia and India gathered in Tokyo on Tuesday for a summit of the “Quad.” What is the group, where did it come from and why do diplomats keep coming up with strange names for various partnerships?
PARIS (AP) — The lone survivor of a 2009 plane crash in the Indian Ocean took the stand Monday in a Paris courtroom, recounting her ordeal as a 12-year-old girl hearing screams, clinging to floating debris and desperately hoping that her mother was still alive.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankan authorities closed schools and asked public officials not to come to work in a desperate move to prepare for an acute fuel shortage that is expected to last days amid the nation's worst economic crisis in decades.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — China says its initiative to build ports and other infrastructure across Asia and Africa, paid for with Chinese loans, will boost trade. But in a cautionary tale for borrowers, Sri Lanka's multibillion-dollar debt to Beijing threatens to hinder efforts to resolve a financial crisis so severe that the Indian Ocean nation cannot import food or gasoline.
PARIS (AP) — The lone survivor of a 2009 passenger plane crash in the Indian Ocean that killed 152 people sat in the front row of a Paris courtroom Monday at the opening of the trial of the Yemeni airline which operated the flight.
MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Agricultural workers in the east and Horn of Africa are preparing for their most severe drought in 40 years, as authorities warn that higher temperatures and less than normal rainfall was recorded by weather agencies in March and April this year.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankan business leaders on Friday called for an end to political instability amid public demands for the president to resign over alleged economic mismanagement, warning that failure to do so would lead to economic catastrophe.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — India signed an agreement to set up hybrid power projects on northern Sri Lankan islands Tuesday in a deal seen as a strategic victory in its competition with China for influence in the Indian Ocean.
BEIJING (AP) — China’s top diplomat on Monday accused Washington of trying to create an Asian version of the U.S.-European NATO military alliance and said it is up to the Biden administration to improve relations with North Korea.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa is bracing for yet another cyclone having already been hit by three major tropical storms in the last month.
Cyclone Emnati is expected to make landfall on the eastern coast of Madagascar late Tuesday amid fears it will be a stronger storm than the three that have left nearly 200 people dead this cyclone season.
LONDON (AP) — The British government reaffirmed its sovereignty over a remote Indian Ocean archipelago on Monday after Mauritius underlined its own territorial claim by planting a flag on the islands.
MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Even as southern African nations assess the devastation caused earlier this month by Cyclone Batsirai, a new tropical storm is approaching as the Indian Ocean region is confronted by an intense cyclone season.
BANGKOK (AP) — A delegation from Mauritius is set to sail Tuesday to the Chagos Islands to press the country's claim for the strategically important Indian Ocean archipelago, which is also claimed by Britain and is home to an American military base.
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) — Cyclone Batsirai's torrential winds and rain are hammering Madagascar, after landing on the island's east coast late Saturday.
An estimated 45,000 people have been displaced by the tropical storm, the National Office for Risk and Disaster Management said on Sunday.
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) — The full force of Cyclone Batsirai pounded Madagascar's eastern coast with torrential winds and rain Saturday night.
The center of the tropical storm landed near Mananjary, on the east coast, and moved inland across the island.
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) — Madagascar has put six of its regions on high alert as tropical Cyclone Batsirai is forecast to hit the Indian Ocean island's east coast Saturday with intense winds of 195 kilometers (121 miles) per hour, according to the Department of Meteorology.
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) — Madagascar is bracing for a new cyclone even as the Indian Ocean island recovers from a tropical storm that wreaked devastation last month.
Cyclone Batsirai is forecast to hit the island's east coast on Saturday with heavy winds and rains, according to Madagascar's Department of Meteorology.
MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Forecasts say Tropical Cyclone Batsirai is increasing in intensity and is expected to pass north of the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius on Wednesday evening and make landfall in central Madagascar on Saturday afternoon.
The airline that carried monkeys part of the way to a U.S. research laboratory before they were involved in a highway crash in Pennsylvania says it will stop the shipments.
Kenya Airways will not renew its contract with the shipper when it expires this month, airline CEO Allan Kilavuka said in an email to The Associated Press.
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Uganda and a group of investors on Tuesday announced their decision to finally proceed with oil production following years of setbacks that threatened the East African country's efforts to become an oil exporter.
BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) — Tropical storm Ana has caused widespread flooding, power outages and killed at least one person in Malawi, officials said Tuesday.
Cutting path of wet destruction across southern Africa, the storm has blown from the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, across Mozambique and into Malawi.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran, Russia and China on Friday began a joint naval drill in the Indian Ocean aimed at boosting security at sea, Iranian state media reported.
State TV said 11 of the country's vessels were joined by three Russian ships, including a destroyer, and two Chinese vessels.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka has paid $500 million due on sovereign bonds from its badly depleted foreign reserves despite calls by experts to defer the payment and use the sum to import essential foods and medicine.
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) — Heavy rains in Madagascar have flooded parts of the capital city, Antananarivo, killing 10 people and making more than 12,000 homeless, officials said Wednesday.
With the rains continuing and a possible cyclone approaching the Indian Ocean island, officials warned of potential landslides in the capital city, which is built on steep hills.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A powerful earthquake shook parts of Indonesia’s main island of Java on Friday, damaging buildings and houses and sending people into the streets, but no casualties were reported.
MIAMI (AP) — Chinese squid vessels were documented using wide nets to illegally catch already overfished tuna as part of a surge in unregulated activity in the Indian Ocean, according to a new report by Norway-based watchdog group that highlights growing concerns about the lack of international cooperation to protect marine species on the high seas.
HYDERABAD, India (AP) — A tropical storm weakened after dumping heavy rains overnight in parts of southern India off the Bay of Bengal as more than 50,000 people evacuated to government-run camps, officials said Saturday.
MALE, Maldives (AP) — The highest court in the Maldives on Tuesday overturned the prison sentence of the country’s former president Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, who had been convicted of money laundering.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s military began its annual war games in a coastal area of the Gulf of Oman, state TV reported Sunday, less than a month before upcoming nuclear talks with the West.
The report said navy and air force units as well as ground forces were participating in a more than 1 million square-kilometer (386,100 square-mile) area east of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
ROME (AP) — The drought-stricken island nation of Madagascar is a ’wake up call” to what the world can expect in coming years due to climate change, the head of the United Nations' food aid agency said Tuesday.
WATAMU, Kenya (AP) — As soon as he gets a call from a fisherman who's accidentally caught a turtle off Kenya’s Indian Ocean coastline, Local Ocean Conservation’s Fikiri Kiponda jumps into his car to save it.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Rwandan troops have joined Mozambican forces to launch a major offensive against Islamic rebels in northern Mozambique as more troops arrive from South Africa and other neighboring countries to battle the insurgency.
BEIJING (AP) — China on Tuesday pledged further assistance to Southeast Asian nations in battling the coronavirus pandemic as it seeks to boost influence with the region where the United States is also looking to strengthen ties.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid of the Maldives won election as the next president of the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, and pledged to push for equal access to coronavirus vaccines, a stronger and greener economic recovery, and stepped up efforts to tackle climate change.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Flash floods and mudslides triggered by heavy rains in Sri Lanka have killed at least four people and left seven missing, while more than 5,000 are displaced, officials said Saturday.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka has received 500,000 doses of Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine donated by China as the Indian Ocean island nation faces severe shortage of vaccines amid a recent rise in infections.
BEIJING (AP) — China’s government defended its handling of a rocket booster that burned up over the Indian Ocean and said Monday it was unfairly being held to different standards than the U.S. and other space programs...
BEIJING (AP) — China's space agency said a core segment of its biggest rocket reentered Earth’s atmosphere above the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and that most of it burned up early Sunday.
Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who tracked the tumbling rocket part, said on Twitter, “An ocean reentry was always statistically the most likely...