Sri Lanka

Google's balloon-powered high-speed Internet service known as "Project Loon" began its first tests in Sri Lanka on Feb. 15 ahead of a planned joint venture with Colombo, the country's top IT official said.

Sri Lanka's government on Jan. 26 destroyed its biggest ever illegal ivory haul in the first public crushing of poached tusks in South Asia, intended to send a stark message to smugglers.

The international trade in ivory has been banned in most of the world since 1989, but illegal smuggling persists in many parts of Asia where ivory is highly prized for medicinal and decorative uses.

Up to 100,000 people still living in camps six years after the end of Sri Lanka's brutal ethnic war will be given land to build homes within six months, President Maithripala Sirisena told AFP Jan. 3.

Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena launched an attack against the organizers of pop star Enrique Iglesias’s Love and Sex concert in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.

The new Turkish party-state has proven to be no different to the "ancien regime" regarding its Kurdish policy, despite all the fanfare in the name of democratization, dialogue, negotiations and the so-called peace process. Now, the situation has returned to a fully-fledged "war on terror," military operations, long curfews, and suspension of the order of law in the name of the law of order.

Aleksandar Vulin, Serbia's minister for refugees, on Thursday said Serbia would no longer allow in "economic" migrants after Slovenia and Croatia announced they had barred such migrants from their countries.

Four states along Europe's Balkan refugee corridor shut their borders on Nov. 19 to those not coming from war-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq, leaving thousands of others seeking a better life in Europe stranded at border crossings.

Bulgaria has become the Offshoring Destination of the Year for 2015, the National Outsourcing Association UK. 

We're pleased to announce that #Bulgaria won Offshoring Destination of the Year at the #EOAawards 2015

? NOA (@TheNOA) October 9, 2015

Australia's hardline policy on asylum-seekers, who have been pushed back by the boatload and incarcerated in offshore camps, is under pressure as public sympathy for Syrians escaping conflict swells in a nation built on migration.
 

Bulgaria is one of the four countries included in the Offshoring Destination of the Year category of the shortlist for the 2015 annual awards of the National Outsourcing Association (NOA).

Bulgaria's rivals in the category are Slovakia, South Africa, and Sri Lanka.