The Maldives has won the Condé Nast Traveller’s Readers Best Island Award for the year 2008. Maldives scored well in all 10 scoring criteria including the top mark for beaches.

The Maldives won this milestone award from the readers’ poll by successfully competing against Greek Islands, Mauritius, Barbados and Hawaii etc. This is the third consecutive year that Maldives won this award.

In addition, six Maldives resorts were among the best hotels in Overseas Leisure Hotels in the Middle East, Africa and the Indian Ocean category. They are One & Only Reethi Rah, Kanuhura Maldives, Soneva Gili, Fourseasons Resort Maldives at Kuda Huraa, Cocoa Island Resort and Huvafenfushi.

MyMaldives.com – one of the most comprehensive Maldives information websites, recently launched a Maldives Web Directory. As the name suggests, this web directory is a listing of websites about or of the Maldives.

It is the aim of the developers to make this Maldives web directory the most comprehensive directory of Maldivian websites. MyMaldives team thus invites all websites either about the Maldives or operated by Maldivians to continue to submit their websites to the most relevant category of the Maldives Web Directory.

The body of Ishmeet Singh – winner of Star TV show “Voice of India 2007”, singing competition held by India’s Star Plus Channel, has been flown to India this morning.

Ishmeet Singh is reported to have died by drowning in the pool of Chaaya Dhonveli Beach Resort where he was staying. While there has been reports of different speculations as to the cause of his fatal accident, as of yet there has been no comment by his friends who were at the pool with him at the time of the tragic accident. The Maldives Police are currently carrying out necessary investigations.

The 19-year-old singer arrived in Maldives Tuesday morning to take part in a show being held in Male’, the capital city, by his contracting music company. The show was planned to be held during this weekend.

Everyone who accompanied Ishmeet Singh to the Maldives has also now returned to India and the show to be held in Malé has now been postponed. However, before they left, the Vice President of Star Plus channel, talking to Television Maldives, promised to be back to hold the postponed show. Saying that he felt deeply indebted to the Maldivian supporters for the love and affection they showed to Ishmeet and his team during this short, ill-fated trip, he said they would definitely be back to hold the show here in Malé. He claimed it would be for the sake of Ishmeet Singh.

The winner of Star TV show “Voice of India 2007”, singing competition held by India’s Star Plus Channel, Ishmeet Singh died in Maldives on Tuesday evening.

Officials from the Chaaya Dhonveli Beach Resort where he was staying said that Ishmeeth had drowned between 5:15pm and 5:20pm while in the swimming pool of the resort.

“He went into the swimming pool with a couple of his friends this afternoon,” Marlon Robert, the Assistant Manager of the Resort, said. “None of them knew how to swim so he was using the baby (shallow) swimming pool. Since he didn’t know how to swim we had advised him not to use the big pool. Somehow or other he ended up in the big pool. When he couldn’t get out of it his friends apparently went looking for help.”

According to the Maldives Police Service, Ishmeeth’s body had been immediately brought to the ADK Hospital in Male’ after the incident. The doctor who had attended to him said that the cause of death seemed to be by drowning. Police said that their investigations were now proceeding.

Arrangements are underway to transport Ishmeeth’s body back to India, sources say.

The 19-year-old singer had arrived in Maldives Tuesday morning to take part in a show being held in Male’, the capital city, by his contracting music company. The show was planned to be held during this weekend.

Supporters of the singer voted heavily for him from Punjab during the finals of the contest. Even though Harshit led the votes tally in most regions of the country, the final count went in Ishmeet’s favour due to heavy voting from Punjab.

Ishmeet had won the ‘Voice of India’ singing contest held on November 26, 2007, pipping his closest rival Harshit from Uttar Pradesh in a keen contest. He was given the winner’s trophy by melody queen Lata Mangeshkar.

Veligandu Island Resort reopened on December 23, 2007. This resort named after its spectacular, long strip of sandy beach was closed for renovation in May this year. According the General Manager Mr Fathulla Ibrahim the 146 bed resort is now reopen with a number of new facilities and services that were not available before.

The arrival of 84 tourists in the afternoon marked the opening of the refurbished Veligandu Island Resort.

Veligandu is situated in Rasdhoo Atoll in North Ari Atoll, about 51 km from Male International Airport.

Veligandu Island Resort
North Ari Atoll
Telephone: (960) 666 0519
Facsimilie:  (960) 666 0648
Email: reservations@veliganduisland.com
Website: www.veliganduisland.com