Northern Ireland: The people of Belfast gave more than £40,000 in disaster relief aid in just six hours yesterday.
Dean Houston McKelvey broke a 26-year tradition to continue his annual charity collection at the steps of St Anne's cathedral.
It was the first time the Church of Ireland "Black Santa" appeal - so called because the Dean wears a long black cape throughout his open-air collection - has continued beyond Christmas.
Meanwhile, there are fears for the safety of a Co Antrim man missing in Sri Lanka. Mr Alex Blair, a historian, was on holiday when the coast was hit by the giant waves on St Stephen's Day.
He is due to fly out of the region tomorrow but his family and friends have so far been unable to contact him.
The relaunch of the "Black Santa" charity appeal was prompted by the scale of the disaster in the Indian Ocean.
Promising to return to the cathedral in Donegall Street again today, Dean McKelvey said he was "taken aback" by the public response, adding that the announcement to restart the collection had only been made yesterday morning.
This year's collection had raised more than £200,000, well above the estimated £180,000 when final counting commenced last weekend.
Each year Dean McKelvey has followed the tradition established 26 years ago by Dean Sammy Crooks and by his predecessor.
During the week before Christmas, the Dean stood with a distinctive collecting barrel at the doors of the cathedral to accept donations.
The money is normally given to a range of local charities as well as to Christian Aid which has already donated some £250,000 to the disaster relief effort.
Dean McKelvey said the generosity of Northern Ireland people in the face of such a catastrophe continued to surprise him.
"The capacity of the Northern Ireland community to respond to people in need never ceases to amaze me," he said.
"I think all of us have been shocked by what we have seen. At the cathedral we simply felt that we had a facility people knew about to channel funds to a cause like this." He added: "The scale and devastation in Asia is going to stretch the capabilities of aid agencies, and indeed governments."
The Lord Mayor of Belfast, Cllr Tom Ekin, yesterday endorsed the appeal and called for more support. "If every man, woman and child in the city of Belfast gave just £1, we could raise more than £270,000 to offer much needed practical support to the people of this devastated region," he said. "The people of Belfast are well-known for their generosity, and a simple act of giving is the best action we can take at this terrible time."