In a promising sign for Sri Lanka’s economy, tourism earnings soared to a pre-pandemic peak of US$ 341.8 million in January 2024 tourism ministry announced. .

India’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI) transactions, via LankaQR, was officially introduced to Sri Lanka at a virtual launch held on Monday (12 Feb.).

The Ceylon Petroleum Storage Terminals (CPSTL) signed an agreement with US-based petroleum products distributor ‘Shell-RM Parks’ today (12 Feb.).

Pakistan's powerful army chief has urged the country to leave "anarchy and polarisation" behind as two ex-prime ministers declared victory in an election that has defied expectations.

Seven people have been killed in a Russian drone attack that caused a huge blaze in Ukraine's north-eastern city of Kharkiv, local officials say.

Tourism Minister Harin Fernando said that the Government is considering extending the visa-free status for India beyond March to continue attracting travellers from the neighbouring giant.

Labour and Foreign Employment Minister Manusha Nanayakkara claimed that worker remittances for January have recorded an increase of 11.4 per cent compared to last year.

An employee attached to a private cleaning company at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) was nabbed by the Sri Lanka Customs officials while attempting to smuggle out gold worth over Rs. 58 million recently..

India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) will be launched on 12 February, Foreign Minister Ali Sabry has told the Indian media.

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is under investigation as part of a probe into an alleged attempted coup to keep him in power, according to one of his former aides.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced the dismissal of Ukraine’s top commander, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, in the biggest military shakeup since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion almost two years ago.

The Government revenue in January has shot up 25% higher than the target to Rs. 274 billion aided by increased VAT in addition to widen coverage, State Finance Minister Ranjith Siymabalapitiya told Parliament yesterday.

Petronet LNG Ltd, India’s biggest liquefied natural gas company, will in 2025 start supplying LNG to Sri Lanka, initially in containers loaded on ships and later going on to build an import terminal, its chief executive said on Thursday.

State Minister of Power and Energy, D.V. Chanaka, says Sri Lanka has generated a revenue of USD 3 million through the sale of 5,200 MT of fuel via the revived bunkering system for vessels. This signifies a significant step forward in stabilizing the country’s energy finances, he added.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is in Australia on a state visit, has met with the Sri Lankan Diaspora in Perth.

Some of these increases are modest and common to Disney’s rivals in the entertainment and travel businesses. Inflation has played a big role, too. But one thing is certain: being a Disney fan has never been more expensive.

The price hikes come as Disney faces a watershed moment in its history. The global entertainment giant is grappling with a still-unprofitable transition to streaming, recent box office blunders — like the soon-forgotten animated feature “Wish,” released in November — and a murky CEO succession plan. A legal battle with Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, which is the state that holds Disney’s largest and most profitable theme parks, is ongoing.

Disney investors seem to be reeling from the uncertainty: The company’s stock is down 11% in the past five years. (Disney reports its quarterly results after the stock market’s close on Wednesday.)

The company did not respond to a request for comment from CNN.

Meanwhile, tickets to the flagship parks have shot up in price. A one-day ticket to Disney World during the peak holiday season has risen 47% since 2019, far outpacing the rate of inflation, according to Don Munsil, the president of MouseSavers, an online guide to discounts and deals at Disney and Universal theme parks.

Here’s the Disney math for a family of four: Two days in Disneyland and California Adventure parks the first weekend of March — not a peak period — will cost $1,310 for admission tickets and parking. Genie+, a pass which speeds buyers through some ride lines, adds $240 to the total. That’s nearly $1,600 — before the mouse ears and giant turkey legs.

A woman wearing Minnie Mouse ears walks down Main Street USA at the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World in Orange County, Florida on June 1, 2022. Joseph Prezioso/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Parks and cruises see uptick in prices
Perks that Disney customers had grown accustomed to have also started to disappear. In the last two years, free shuttles from the airport to the parks in Florida were eliminated and the once-free FastPass system was replaced by Genie+, which starts at $25 per day.

“Over the course of the time we’ve been running MouseSavers, we’ve certainly seen Disney introduce more upsells,” Munsil said. Disney had begun to increase the prices of their cruises “pretty quickly,” he said, though he added that escalating demand for Disney’s ships has played a role.

Brittany Huizinga, an Arizona-based travel agent at Smart Moms Travel, took a two-part trip with her husband and two children during the holiday season: The first four nights were spent at Walt Disney World and the last five nights on a Disney Cruise ship.

“Including airfare getting from Arizona to Florida, having a rental car and all the extra excursions we did on the cruise, it was about $20,000,” she said, or more than $2,000 a day.

Disney’s cost-cutting efforts
It isn’t solely in-person experiences that have gone up in price, though. In the fall, Disney hiked the price of its flagship streaming service, Disney+ and CEO Bob Iger has signaled that the company would take steps to crack down on password sharing in 2024.

In its 2023 annual report, released in November, Disney cited “recent inflationary conditions” as the reason behind some of its increased costs. However, the report also elucidated some of the House of Mouse’s struggles: operating income in the company’s entertainment division plummeted 32% between 2022 and 2023.

After a year of box office disappointments and heavy investment in Disney+, the company has looked for ways to save money. In November, Disney announced it would slash its expenses by another $2 billion, in addition to the $5.5 billion reduction it had previously announced, which included thousands of job cuts.

Doug Arthur, an analyst who covers Disney for Huber Research Partners and has a “buy” rating on the stock, is confident that money will soon come for Disney’s streaming business.

“They will make money in this, and they will probably make a lot. I’m not too worried about whether it’s this quarter, next quarter, this year, or next year,” he said. “It’s going to happen.”

On Tuesday, Disney’s ESPN, along with Fox Corporation and Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN’s parent company) made the once-unthinkable announcement that they would unite to create a new streaming service to house their sports assets. Each company will own one-third of the new service.

Disney has said it expects to get its streaming business out of the red by the end of this year.

For now, though, Disney, like most companies that contend with rising costs, seems to have passed some of those increases off to its customers.

Lee said she strategized to trim down additional costs of her Disney vacation, including purchasing cheaper replica Mickey Mouse ears ahead of time on Amazon. Disney-branded mouse ear headbands, sold at the company’s theme parks and online, have bumped up in price in recent years, along with other Disney-branded merchandise. According to the Wayback Machine, a digital library of historical websites, the headbands are up nearly 17% since 2022.

Dhaka, Feb. 8 -- Thirteen exhibitors from Bangladesh have participated in the Texworld Apparel Sourcing at the Porte de Versailles Exhibition Centre in Paris, France.

The US Supreme Court will wade into uncharted legal waters on Thursday as it considers if Donald Trump should be barred from running for president.

A senior commander of an Iran-backed militia has been killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad.

The Colombo tea auction has begun 2024 on a mixed note with better prices month-on-month but down year-on-year.