IOC inspection team in London before 2012 Games

Wed, Oct 5, 2011

LONDON (AP) — Less than 10 months before the opening ceremony, IOC inspectors are back in London to check on preparations for the Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee's coordination commission began a three-day visit Wednesday — its next to last trip to London before the games start on July 27, 2012.

"This is really about the ascent to the summit," London organizing committee chairman Sebastian Coe told The Associated Press.

It's the first time the commission has been to London since the capital was rocked by riots in August, violence that was trigged by a fatal police shooting in the Tottenham area.

With most of London's venue construction complete, policing, security and transportation are likely to be top issues in the talks.

The IOC team will receive updates from organizers and tour some of the venues, including the Olympic Park in east London and the archery site at Lord's cricket ground, where a test event is taking place this week.

This is the IOC's ninth visit to London since the city was awarded the games in 2005.

Saudi silence on Israeli-seized islands

Wed Oct 5, 2011

Saudi Arabia and the Western states have kept silent for decades regarding the occupation of two Saudi western islands by the Israeli regime.

Israeli forces reportedly occupied Saudi Arabia's Tiran and Sanafir Islands in 1967.

The two islands are located at the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, leading to the Red Sea.

Tiran Island, which has an area of about 80 square kilometers, is located at the inflow of the Straits of Tiran. Sanafir Island, with an area of 33 square kilometers, also lies to the east of Tiran.

The two islands were given to the former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser for logistics use in the Six Day War of 1967 against Israeli forces.

However, the islands have been occupied by Tel Aviv since Egypt's defeat.

The Straits of Tiran, which has remained under the control of Tel Aviv, has strategic significance since it serves as Israel's only direct access to the Red Sea.

Regional observers say while Saudi Arabia has maintained a total silence on its own Israeli-occupied islands, it vigorously pursues baseless claims by the United Arab Emirates against three tiny Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/202842.html.

Two ministers relinquish foreign citizenship

Oct 04, 2011

AMMAN (JT) - Two Cabinet members applied to relinquish their non-Jordanian nationalities at the concerned embassies, a government official said.

Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications and Government Spokesperson Abdullah Abu Rumman said the step taken by Minister of Water and Irrigation Mohammad Najjar and Minister of Culture Jeryes Samawi on Monday “was made to abide by the [new] Constitution, which prohibits Jordanians who have another nationality from holding ministerial posts”, according to the Jordan News Agency, Petra.

Under the amendments made to Article 75 of the Constitution, which went into effect Saturday, “no person can become a deputy, senator, minister or a high-ranking official if he/she holds dual nationality”.

In a press conference yesterday, Abu Rumman said Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit has informed all ministers who hold dual nationalities to rectify their statuses according to the Constitution, Petra reported.

Senator Talal Abu Ghazaleh was the first to resign his seat as he holds Bahraini citizenship, along with his Jordanian nationality.

Source: The Jordan Times.
Link: http://jordantimes.com/two-ministers-relinquish-foreign-citizenship.

Saudi police 'open fire on civilians' as protests gain momentum

BY PATRICK COCKBURN
WEDNESDAY 05 OCTOBER 2011

Pro-democracy protests which swept the Arab world earlier in the year have erupted in eastern Saudi Arabia over the past three days, with police opening fire with live rounds and many people injured, opposition activists say.

Saudi Arabia last night confirmed there had been fighting in the region and that 11 security personnel and three civilians had been injured in al-Qatif, a large Shia city on the coast of Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province. The opposition say that 24 men and three women were wounded on Monday night and taken to al-Qatif hospital.

The Independent has been given exclusive details of how the protests developed by local activists. They say unrest began on Sunday in al-Awamiyah, a Shia town of about 25,000 people, when Saudi security forces arrested a 60-year-old man to force his son – an activist – to give himself up.

Ahmad Al-Rayah, a spokesman for the Society for Development and Change, which is based in the area, said that most of the civilians hit were wounded in heavy firing by the security forces after 8 pm on Monday. "A crowd was throwing stones at a police station and when a local human rights activist named Fadel al-Mansaf went into the station to talk to them and was arrested," he said.

Mr Rayah added that "there have been protests for democracy and civil rights since February, but in the past the police fired into the air. This is the first time they have fired live rounds directly into a crowd." He could not confirm if anybody had been killed.

The Shia of Saudi Arabia, mostly concentrated in the Eastern Province, have long complained of discrimination against them by the fundamentalist Sunni Saudi monarchy. The Wahhabi variant of Islam, the dominant faith in Saudi Arabia, holds Shia to be heretics who are not real Muslims.

The US, as the main ally of Saudi Arabia, is likely to be alarmed by the spread of pro-democracy protests to the Kingdom and particularly to that part of it which contains the largest oil reserves in the world. The Saudi Shia have been angered at the crushing of the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain since March, with many protesters jailed, tortured or killed, according Western human rights organisations.

Hamza al-Hassan, an opponent of the Saudi government from Eastern Province living in Britain, predicted that protests would spread to more cities. "I am frightened when I see video film of events because most people in this region have guns brought in over the years from Iraq and Yemen and will use them [against government security men]," he said. He gave a slightly different account of the start of the riots in al-Awamiyah, saying that two elderly men had been arrested by the security forces, one of whom had a heart attack.

"Since September there has been a huge presence of Saudi security forces in al-Qatif and all other Shia centers " he said. Al-Qatif was the scene of similar protests in March, which were swiftly quashed by security forces.

The Saudi statement alleges that the recent protests were stirred up by an unnamed foreign power, by which it invariably means Iran. The interior ministry was quoted on Saudi television as saying that "a foreign country is trying to undermine national security by inciting strife in al-Qatif". Saudi Arabia and the Sunni monarchies of the western Gulf have traditionally blamed Iran for any unrest by local Shia, but have never produced any evidence other than to point at sympathetic treatment of the demonstrations on Iranian television.

The 20 doctors in Bahrain sentenced to up to 15 years in prison last week say their interrogators tortured them repeatedly to force them to make false confessions that Iran was behind the protests. The counter-revolution in Bahrain was heralded by the arrival of a 1,500-strong Saudi-led military force, which is still there.

Mr Rayah, who flew from Saudi Arabia to Beirut to be free to talk about the protests, said: "People want a change and a new way of living." He said that, in particular, they were demanding a constitution and a free assembly for the Eastern Province. He also wanted the Society for Development and Change legally registered.

Mr Hassan blamed the protests on the fact "that there has been no political breakthrough".

"I am from the city of al-Safwa, which is very close to al-Awamiyah, and there is very high unemployment in both," he said. Some 70 per cent of the Saudi population is believed to be under 30 and many do not have jobs. "We were hoping for municipal reforms and regional elections for years but we got nothing."

He said reforms reported in the Western media were meaningless and that only a few Saudis had bothered to vote in the most recent local elections because local councils had no power.

Source: The Independent.
Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-police-open-fire-on-civilians-as-protests-gain-momentum-2365614.html.

Iranians in Iraqi Camp to Seek Refugee Status

By Barbara Slavin

WASHINGTON, Sep 28 2011 (IPS) - In a development that could help resolve an eight-year-old diplomatic and humanitarian standoff, the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that has several thousand adherents at a military camp in Iraq, has agreed to allow residents to apply for refugee status and be interviewed individually by U.N. officials.

Vincent Cochetel, Washington representative for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told IPS Wednesday that an agreement was reached about 10 days ago through the MEK’s legal counsel in London.

“They have agreed to individual screening,” he said. “We have offered an alternative location near Ashraf,” the camp north of Baghdad where the MEK members reside.

The decision by the MEK could help resolve a crisis that has weighed heavily on the United States as it prepares to withdraw most of its remaining troops from Iraq. Iraqi officials are considering allowing a few thousand U.S. troops to stay in the country but only to provide training and other military assistance.

Mark Toner, deputy State Department spokesman, told IPS, “We fully support the international community’s efforts to resolve the situation at Ashraf.”

There are about 3,300 Iranians left in the camp.

In the past, the MEK leadership has refused to allow most residents of Camp Ashraf to apply for refugee status or to speak with UNHCR representatives without MEK officials present.

Former members of the group, who contend that the MEK is a cult that fosters blind obedience to its leaders, say that many Ashraf inhabitants have been held against their will and would eagerly leave the camp if they could. There have been fears that the leaders would order members to commit suicide en masse rather than let them go.

The agreement with UNHCR is a necessary first step to close the camp – something the Iraqi government has long sought – but does not resolve the problem of where the residents find refuge.

“The challenge for us is to find countries to receive them,” Cochetel said. “The likelihood that they can remain in Iraq is very limited.”

The current Iraqi government, dominated by Shiites and Kurds, has tolerated the MEK camp only under U.S. and international pressure. The Iraqi leadership blames the MEK for allying with Saddam Hussein and participating in brutal crackdowns against Iraqi Kurds and Shiites following the 1991 Gulf War.

The George W. Bush administration initially promised to declare residents of Ashraf enemy combatants following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam’s regime. Instead, however, U.S. forces put the camp under their protection. Since 2008, when Iraq regained sovereignty over the camp, Iraqi troops have entered Ashraf several times in a futile effort to convince residents to leave. A few dozen people have been killed in skirmishes between the Iraqis and the Iranians.

Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council, told IPS the agreement with UNHCR “could potentially be a breakthrough”, but that it remained unclear whether the MEK leadership would allow everyone in the camp to be interviewed.

“Hopefully, if given enough protection, camp residents will be able to be truthful about conditions in Ashraf and where they want to go,” Parsi said.

Several hundred camp residents have managed to return to Iran since 2003 through the auspices of the International Red Cross. Many of those who remain would fear to go to Iran now in light of the widespread crackdown on Iranian opposition groups that followed disputed 2009 presidential elections.

Originally a Marxist-Islamist group that helped overthrow the Shah of Iran, the MEK lost a power struggle with more Islamic-oriented factions following the 1979 revolution. The group has very little support within Iran because of its siding with Iraq in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. During the following decade, while Saddam remained in power, the MEK carried out assassinations of prominent officials and other attacks within Iran.

The U.S. State Department put the MEK on its list of foreign terrorist organisations in 1997 because of the group’s bloody record, which includes the assassination of six U.S. citizens in Iran during the 1970s.

MEK leaders insist that they have renounced terrorism and now advocate a democratic government for Iran. But their literature continues to treat their leader, Mariam Rajavi, who lives outside Paris, as the object of a personality cult. The whereabouts of Mrs. Rajavi’s husband, Massoud, who led the group into exile, are unknown.

In recent months, wealthy supporters of the MEK have waged an aggressive lobbying campaign to be removed from the U.S. terrorist list, paying tens of thousands of dollars apiece to prominent former U.S. officials to speak on the group’s behalf.

One argument advanced by MEK adherents has been that removal from the list would allow Ashraf residents to come to the United States. However, a State Department official told IPS last month that U.S. law forbids immigration to anyone with ties to a foreign terrorist organisation. He said this includes “those who provided material support to, or received military-type training from the group, as many MEK members have”.

Asked if UNHCR was looking to Europe – where many Ashraf residents have relatives – to give refuge to camp residents, Cochetel said, “I can’t say at this point that their response has been overwhelming.”

Source: Inter-Press Service.
Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/09/iranians-in-iraqi-camp-to-seek-refugee-status/.

Greeks Take to the Streets Against More Cuts

By Joanna Kakissis / Athens
Wednesday, Oct. 05, 2011

The Greek government is facing powerful public resistance to new austerity measures that foreign lenders are demanding in return for bailout loans. But only a few thousand protesters marched to Parliament on Wednesday during the first general strike since June. Scuffles broke out between fringe anarchists and riot police. Officers dispersed the crowd with tear gas.

Marina Massad, a 19-year-old photography student, said this chronic violence likely scared most Greeks into staying home. "No one likes the chemicals," said Massad, her face smeared with white liquid maalox, which helps keeps tear gas from stinging. "They are scared. But someone has to come out here and make some noise. So here I am."

The country's main labor unions, ADEDY and GSEE, which represent 2.5 million workers, held the strike to protest cuts in the public sector and a new property tax which will be collected through electricity bills. The strike grounded most international flights, halted trains and closed tax offices and some state schools. Hospitals are running on emergency staff. At the same time, inspectors from the European Union and International Monetary Fund continue their evaluation of Greece's finances to determine whether the country should receive $11 billion, the latest installment of a $150 billion bailout loan package, by next month. The Greek government said Tuesday it has enough cash to pay its bills only through November.

Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said Tuesday that Greeks must back the new measures if the country has any hope of meeting its deficit target for 2011, which was revised to 8.5% of gross domestic product from 7.6%. Along with tax hikes, budget cuts and the long-overdue reforming of the country's bloated public sector, the Greek government must also privatize some state assets and crack down on longtime tax evasion.

But winning public support for more austerity seems virtually impossible right now. Polls show that nearly all Greeks oppose more cuts and most believe the measures have done little to get Greece out of debt. More than a year of tax hikes and wage and pension cuts have decimated the middle class. Unemployment is at more than 16%. Personal bankruptcies, homelessness, suicides and crime are all on the rise. And yet the Greek government missed its deficit targets this year. Euro-zone finance ministers have decided to delay the latest loan payment, which Greece needs to stay solvent, because they don't think the country is trying hard enough to reform itself. More austerity, they say.

Yanis Varoufakis, a professor of economic theory at the University of Athens, is one of many economists who say austerity is actually killing an already weak Greek economy. "Anyone with any logic can see that this is not the way to jump-start the economy of a country that's in recession," Varoufakis says. Instead, austerity has put the economy in "a permafrost from which the Greek society has lost its capacity to react creatively to the crisis and to work itself out of the hole in which it has found itself."

Greeks have also lost faith in nearly all of their politicians. As the government party, center-left PASOK has suffered the most. "Right now, considering how big and unprecedented this financial crisis is, it's understood that the government committed the equivalent of political suicide a long time ago with the austerity drive," says Takis Pappas, a political science professor.

PASOK, which stands for the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, is led by George Papandreou, a quiet but stubborn sociologist and the American-born scion of Greece's most prominent political family. His grandfather and father were both premiers. His father, Andreas, who founded the party, was a Harvard-educated economist who built up the public sector to offer "jobs for life" to an emerging middle class in Greece. The civil service never became a bastion of Greece's best minds. Instead, it grew into an unwieldy monster overstuffed with party loyalists, many of whom were unqualified for their jobs.

Yet many Greeks, even well-educated ones, long desired a position in the civil service "because it was easy," Pappas says. "Now that option is gone. So for the government to restructure the civil service and make it truly productive, it has to make sure that it lays off not the bright, efficient workers but the ones who are not doing their jobs. It has to give people incentives to strive instead of rely on cronyism. The state needs to show that it has changed."

Anita Papachristopoulou, a 44-year-old environmental scientist who works for the Athens Water Supply and Sewer Company, says there's a grain of truth to the caricature of the lazy Greek civil servant worker. But she says there are thousands of Greek public-sector employees, like herself, who got their jobs through perseverance, not connections. "No one introduced me to anyone," says Papachristopoulou. "I just sent in my application cold, and I was lucky to get the job."

Panagiotis Akarepis, a 44-year-old air traffic controller, got his civil service post — one of the most demanding jobs in the world — after he passed several stringent tests. Air traffic controllers walked off the job as part of the larger strike by ADEDY, the public sector union, but also because of they say are illegal cuts on allowances and pay.

"They are penalizing everyone indiscriminately for this bad image of public servants, which in turn makes people who actually do work, not want to work," he says. "How is anything ever going to get done this way? It's totally unfair to put everyone in the same bucket."

Source: TIME.
Link: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2096177,00.html.

Ex-premier elected new Czech president

January 26, 2013

PRAGUE (AP) — A former left-leaning prime minister staged a big return to power Saturday by winning the Czech Republic's first directly elected presidential vote.

With all the votes counted, Milos Zeman won 54.8 percent of the vote for the largely ceremonial post, the Czech Statistics Office reported. His opponent, conservative Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, had 45.2 percent.

"Long live Zeman!" his supporters chanted at his campaign headquarters in Prague. "I promise that as a president elected in a direct popular vote I will try to be the voice of all citizens," Zeman said.

Voters seemed to punish Schwarzenberg for the government's unpopular austerity cuts that aimed to reduce the budget deficit. "It definitely didn't help me," Schwarzenberg said, adding he will continue to serve as foreign minister.

Since Czechoslovakia split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic in 1993, the Czech Republic has had two presidents elected by Parliament: Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus. But bickering during those votes led lawmakers to give that decision to the public.

The 68-year-old Zeman will replace the euro-skeptic Klaus, whose second and final term ends March 7. Zeman is considered more favorable toward the 27-nation European Union, to which the country belongs. People in his inner circle also have close business ties with Russia so "he might become an advocate of closer relations with Russia," said Josef Mlejnek, an analyst from Prague's Charles University.

Zeman is not opposed to pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and opposes Kosovo's independence. In the campaign, one of the top issues became the 1945 expulsion of 3 million ethnic Germans from then-Czechoslovakia in a move approved by the Allies. Schwarzenberg said Czechs should not be proud of this action, prompting attacks from both Zeman and Klaus.

"Nationalism took over the campaign," said Mlejnek. A chain smoker who likes a good drink, Zeman made international headlines as prime minister with his outspoken comments. He once compared the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Adolf Hitler, drawing condemnations from the EU and the Arab League, and called Austrians who opposed a Czech nuclear plant "idiots."

After the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., Zeman and his interior minister said they believed that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in April 2001. That purported meeting was cited as evidence of a possible al-Qaida connection to Iraq. The 9/11 commission later said such a meeting never happened.

In 2002, Zeman outraged German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder by calling ethnic those Germans "Hitler's fifth column." In protest, Schroeder canceled his official trip to Prague. During his four years in office beginning in 1998, Zeman's government privatized the ailing bank sector but was criticized for a lack of transparency in privatizing state-owned property and for often failing to run public tenders for state contracts.

Under the Czech constitution, the president has the power to pick the prime minister after a general election and to appoint members of the Central Bank board. With the approval of Parliament's upper house, the president also appoints Constitutional Court judges.

Otherwise the president has little executive power and the country is run by the government chosen and led by the prime minister.

Thousands of Portuguese teachers protest big cut

January 26, 2013

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Thousands of teachers from around Portugal are marching in downtown Lisbon to protest proposed spending cuts they say will slash €1 billion ($1.3 billion) from the education budget.

Unions say the government plans to privatize many public schools and cut around 50,000 sector jobs. Union spokesman Mario Nogueira says the plans revealed in a recent document from the International Monetary Fund would "mean the end of a free and inclusive public school system."

Portugal, which is headed for a third straight year of recession, needed a €78 billion lifeline in May 2011 to avert bankruptcy and has a jobless rate of 16.3 percent. Austerity measures have triggered many strikes and protests.

It was the third country that uses the euro to require an international bailout to deal with its debts.

U.N. resolution on Syria vetoed

Oct. 4, 2011

DAMASCUS, Syria, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- Russia and China Tuesday vetoed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that would have condemned Syria's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

The proposed resolution included a call for an immediate end to alleged human rights abuses by the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, the United Nations said in a release.

In Syria, activists said four people were killed Tuesday in clashes between government security forces and military defectors in Talbiseh, near Homs, Voice of America reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in London, said at least one those killed was a civilian.

The fighting Tuesday followed days of security operations in Rastan, during which activists say government forces arrested as many as 3,000 people to track down dissident soldiers.

It's estimated 2,700 people have died in anti-government protests in Syria since mid-March.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, France, Gabon, Germany, Nigeria, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States voted in favor of the draft Security Council resolution. Brazil, India, Lebanon and South Africa abstained.

A veto by any one of the council's five permanent members -- China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States -- is enough to block any resolution.

The proposed wording condemned "the continued grave and systematic human rights violations and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities." It called for all sides to reject violence and extremism and for the creation of "an inclusive Syrian-led political process conducted in an environment free from violence, fear, intimidation and extremism, and aimed at effectively addressing the legitimate aspirations and concerns of Syria's population."

After the veto, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said his country does not support Assad's regime but that the draft resolution was not the way to achieve a peaceful resolution of the crisis. He said most Syrians desire a gradual political change, not an abrupt overthrow of the current government, and the resolution failed to adequately factor in the impact of extremists organizations in the country.

Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong said his country was greatly concerned about the violence in Syria but the resolution would only complicate matters. He said the threat of sanctions would not resolve the conflict in Syria.

French Ambassador Gerard Araud said he was disappointed in the vote, which he said came after repeated attempts by the co-sponsors to work out acceptable wording.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the countries that did not back the resolution would have to answer to the Syrian people. She said it was a "ruse" to suggest passing the resolution would lead to military intervention in Syria.

Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari of Syria said the resolution revealed some Western countries' desire to undermine his country's authorities.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/10/04/UN-resolution-on-Syria-vetoed/UPI-40371317740266/.

Honduras solar energy plans get a boost

Oct. 5, 2011

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Financially troubled and diplomatically isolated since a controversial 2009 coup, Honduras has taken a tentative step toward shedding some of its energy burden and opting for a switch from diesel to solar energy.

An $84 million project, surprisingly large for a country struggling with debt, devastating effects of political turmoil and international isolation, is intended to be a win-win situation for Honduras and Onyx Contract and Solutions, Inc., the company contracted to deliver the project within nine months.

Funding for the project comes from Villela and Villela law and lobby firm, which has its office in Roatan, Onyx said. News of the contract on the Onyx Web site makes clear the project is part of a wider plan to build support for countries seen as friends of the United States or seen to be under pressure from left-wing populist forces in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Onyx pulls no punches. Those three states appear in deep red in a sea of blue in an online graphic bearing the caption, "The high stakes struggle for power effecting (sic) neighboring U.S. allies."

Onyx reasons a better electrified and energy self-sufficient populace is less likely to revolt against the government in power or align itself with forces challenging U.S. interests in the area. It cited Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and Panama as "current allies" that deserved help with energy independence.

Onyx Service and Solutions will build the solar power project at Roatan, Honduras.

The project will assist Honduras in becoming more self-reliant for electrical power as opposed to using imported diesel for power generation, "which comes at a very high cost," including dependence on Venezuela.

The project aims to generate 18.5 megawatts of power from 65,000 280-watt solar panels. Onyx is also in talks to increase the size of the solar power capacity up to 58 total megawatts, once the original 18.5 megawatt facility comes online.

Onyx said it has "identified a lucrative market for solar power projects in areas that use diesel produced electricity" throughout Central and Latin America and the Caribbean. The company is hopeful of new projects in Colombia, Mexico and Panama.

"Beyond the company's excitement over supplying and installing their newest products, this project also represents a move to assist a strong U.S. ally to become more self-reliant for electrical power," Onyx said.

"Currently, many nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean find themselves being squeezed by the need for power coupled with the temptation to use Venezuelan diesel for electrical generation," Onyx said.

Honduras has struggled to restore international links after a 2009 coup against President Jose Manuel Zelaya triggered a political crisis that only eased after Porfirio Lobo was elected president under the military's supervision. Despite U.S. and EU recognition, many Latin American states still don't acknowledge Lobo's presidency.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/10/05/Honduras-solar-energy-plans-get-a-boost/UPI-86681317811210/.