Mount Lavinia / AFP Tourists have flocked back to Sri Lanka’s palm-fringed beaches since a bloody civil war ended in 2009, but environmentalists warn unchecked development means some areas are now so polluted, swimming there is a health hazard. Sewage from thriving hotels and guesthouses pours, often untreated, out into the water polluting the sea and shore. Even the …

  Montevideo / AFP Alvaro Brusti had never worked in his life before he wound up behind bars for armed robbery. Now after five years inside, the 34-year-old is running his own company, in an unusual scheme at a Uruguayan jail. The Punta de Rieles prison east of the capital Montevideo looks like many other penitentiaries from the outside, with …

  DUBAI / WAM Al Tayer Group, a UAE-based business group, donated 10 Ford E-350 DRW ambulances to Emirates Red Crescent (ERC). The cut-away units were especially converted into ambulances by Horton Emergency Vehicles in Ohio, USA. Ahmed Al Tayer, Director of the Al Tayer Group, handed over the ambulances to Mohammed Abdullah Alhaj Al Zaroni, Manager of the Dubai …