Sri Lanka has barred a Chinese ship carrying desperately needed organic fertilizer that experts have found to be tainted with harmful bacteria, officials said yesterday.
The ban comes as Sri Lanka battles food shortages caused by a currency crisis.
Farmers have said that a ban on chemical fertilizer could ruin their crops this year.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The office of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said that the Sri Lankan National Plant Quarantine Services had tested a sample from the unnamed Chinese vessel and “confirmed the presence of organisms, including certain types of harmful bacteria.”
The Sri Lankan Commercial High Court has banned any payment to Qingdao Seawin Biotech Group for the 96,000 tonnes of fertilizer, an official statement added.
Authorities halted the US$42 million deal last month, but reports said that the cargo had still been shipped and was due in Colombo. The location of the ship has not been revealed.
The Sri Lanka Ports Authority said that the Sri Lankan Ministry of Agriculture on Saturday ordered it to prevent the unloading of the fertilizer in any port and to turn away the Chinese vessel.
Sri Lanka originally ordered the organic fertilizer from China as part of its efforts to become the world’s first fully organic farming nation.
The organic plant nutrients from China were meant to replace phased-out chemicals during the main rice cultivation season that started on Oct. 15.
Following widespread farmer protests that the abandoning of agrochemicals would critically hit yields, the Sri Lankan government last week lifted a ban on chemical fertilizer imposed in May.
It has since imported 30,000 tonnes of potassium chloride as fertilizer and about 3 million liters of nitrogen-based plant nutrients from India.
Farmers of tea — the main export commodity along with rice — have warned that crop yields could be halved without chemicals.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not