There is at least one item on the Maldives

President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom on Saturday proposed four measures to address the energy crisis facing countries of the eight-member regional body, whose leaders focused their inaugural speeches, at the 15th summit meeting, on a wide range of topics from terrorism and climate change to rising food prices.

Noting that high demand for energy was a consequence of rapid economic growth in South Asia, Gayoom said that first, reliance on fossil fuels need to be reduced and tangible targets should be set to harness alternative energy sources.

A new health insurance scheme, Social Health Insurance Scheme, which will cover all Maldivians and is being prepared by the Social Security Ministry will be put into service next month, the Ministry has said.

Thoriq Ali, who had been given the task of coming up with a new health insurance scheme after the scheme that was supposed to insure all Government employees and was backed by the Government had failed earlier, said that the new scheme would come into effect in phases.

The bad weather and unusually strong winds being experienced across the country has left a wake of destruction in many islands of the Maldives.

A Police Media Official cited officials from storm ravaged Baa atoll as saying that the severe storms had caused serious damages in Baa atoll Eydhafushi. The strong winds had blown off the roofs of several houses and felled many breadfruits trees in the island, he said. The official said that although no one had been injured in any of the incidents so far many houses and private properties had been left destroyed or damaged by the storm.

The number of Dengue fever cases being reported in Male' and other islands of Maldives is increasing rapidly, a report by Department of Public Health (DPH) has revealed.

Continuous rainfall in Haa Dhaalu atoll Kulhudhuffushi caused severe flooding in the island leading to the closure of schools on Tuesday, the Island Office has said. Officials from the Kulhudhuffushi Island Office said yesterday afternoon that 25 houses in the island had reported being flooded during the storm and that in some houses the kitchens had flooded so bad that it was impossible to cook in there.

Water bathed the surface of southern Mars for millions of years, helping to create an environment theoretically capable of nurturing life, according to a new study into the planet's mysterious oceans.

Scientists at Brown University in Rhode Island used an instrument aboard a US spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, to hunt for traces of phyllosilicates, or clay-like minerals that preserve a record of water's interaction with rocks.

Ninety-three million years ago, Earth was a reshuffled jigsaw of continents, a hothouse where the average temperature was nearly twice that of today.

Palm trees grew in what would be Alaska, large reptiles roamed in northern Canada and the ice-free Arctic Ocean warmed to the equivalent of a tepid swimming pool.

So our planet was balmy -- but hardly a biological paradise, for it was whacked by a mass die-out. The depths of the ocean suddenly became starved of oxygen, wiping out swathes of marine life.

The Employment Act which excludes a lot of staff in different sectors from their basic rights came into effect yesterday.

President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom departed for Geneva on Saturday night to attend the Global Humanitarian Forum's Annual Meeting 2008, "The Human Face of Climate Change'. The Meeting will be held in Geneva on the 24th and 25th of this month. The President is attending the meeting on the invitation of the Forum's President, Former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. The Global Humanitarian Forum is a newly founded NGO by the Swiss government and a group of senior leaders from the academic, business, government, international and civil society.