Indonesia’s president-elect seeks to boost defense ties with UAE

COLOMBO: Saudi Arabia is to finance a bridge construction project in Sri Lanka’s eastern district of Trincomalee, the Kingdom’s envoy in Colombo said on Thursday.

Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development and the Saudi Fund for Development have signed a revised agreement for a $10.5 million infrastructure project in the coastal town of Kinniya that will connect it to the Kurinchakerny peninsula.

The ministry announced on Wednesday: “(Some) $10.5 million has been allocated for the construction of Kurinchakerny Bridge, facilitating the transport and business needs of approximately 100,000 residents.”

The funds were repurposed from an earlier project between the Sri Lankan government and the SFD, the Saudi Ambassador to Sri Lanka Khalid bin Hamoud Al-Kahtani said.

The Kingdom previously funded the reconstruction of the Peradeniya-Badulla-Chenkaladi road in Sri Lanka, which connected the country’s eastern, middle and southern provinces. The massive project, which helped improve road safety and mobility in the island nation, was completed in 2021.

“The balance left from the project has been given for the construction of the project on a request made by the Sri Lankan government,” Al-Kahtani told Arab News.

“Through the revised agreement, it is expected to transfer funds that remained in the aforesaid project … and to mobilize the same towards construction of the Kurinchakerny Bridge (in Kinniya). It is envisaged to provide solutions to many transport difficulties.” 

Saudi Arabia has helped finance over a dozen projects in Sri Lanka, covering education, water, energy, health and infrastructure. The SFD has also granted at least 15 development loans to the island nation, worth more than $425 million in total.

In Trincomalee, the new bridge will be the second financed by the Kingdom after the Kinniya Bridge. At 396 meters it is the longest bridge in Sri Lanka and was opened in 2009.

A.L. Ashraff, a Kinniya-based journalist, said that the Kinniya Bridge had “triggered the region’s economic and cultural development.” 

The Kurinchakerny Bridge, he said, was a “fantastic gift for the thousands of people in Kinniya, which would make their daily life easier.”

BUDAPEST: Police in Hungary said Thursday they were investigating bomb threats that were sent to more than 240 schools across the country, resulting in classes being canceled at some schools.
The threats, which came in the form of emails, were identical in their text and likely sent by a single sender, police said in a statement. Officers were being dispatched to all affected institutions. No explosives or explosive devices were found in the buildings inspected so far, police added.
Gergely Gulyás, chief of staff to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, said that “education in most schools in the country proceeds smoothly,” and that school administrators could decide for themselves whether to send students home.
He said Orbán on Thursday had consulted repeatedly with the interior minister and the minister in charge of Hungary’s secret services.
The emails were sent from numerous email providers “including foreign ones,” Gulyás said. Hungarian secret services were in consultation with their counterparts in neighboring Slovakia, where similar bomb threats were made last year, Gulyás said.
On Wednesday, numerous schools in around a dozen cities in Bulgaria also received bomb threats, according to Bulgarian public broadcaster BNT.