Daily News Channel
With fish as witnesses, the president of Maldives and his Cabinet wore scuba gear and used hand signals Saturday at an underwater meeting to highlight the threat climate change poses to the archipelago nation. The meeting, chaired by President Mohamed Nasheed, took place around a table about 16 feet (5 meters) underwater, according to the president’s Web site
On a plane to the Maldives, tourists sigh about the luxury resorts and sun-dappled beaches to which they are bound. From above, the country’s coral-fringed lagoons in the Indian Ocean look computer-generated: arrayed in turquoise pods, they stretch over an azure expanse that would span from Rome to Budapest. Ibn Battuta, the 14th century Arab explorer, hailed the archipelago as “one of the wonders of the world.” Ever since, the Maldives has enchanted shipwrecked sailors, Hollywood celebrities and Russian oligarchs fortunate enough to wash up by its shores.