Kuwait loans Morocco to fund High Speed Train project

- Mohamed Tamer
Sunday, 24 July 2011

Global Arab Network - The Kuwait Fund for Arab and Economic Development (KFAED) loaned Morocco 712 million dirhams (89.2 million dollars) as part of the first phase of its participation in funding the project of the High Speed Train (HST) linking Tangier to Casablanca.

Two loan and guarantee agreements related to the project were signed, Tuesday in Rabat, by the Fund and Morocco with the attendance notably of Kuwati Ambassador in Rabat Shamlan Abdulaziz Al-Roomi.

This project is part of the ambitious development program meant to reduce the distance between the Kingdom's cities. It also aims to promote high speed rail services to meet the growing demand for this environment-friendly transportation means and support Morocco's development dynamic.

The two agreements were signed, on the Moroccan side, by secretary general of the Economy Ministry Khalid Safir, and director at the railway office (ONCF) Mohamed Smouni, and on the Kuwaiti side, by director general of the KFAED Abdelwahab Ahmed Al Badr.

Source: Global Arab Network.
Link: http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/2011072411244/Industry/kuwait-loans-morocco-to-fund-high-speed-train-project.html.

Sudan: Egypt builds new Khartoum Airport

- Mokhtar Thabet
Sunday, 24 July 2011

Global Arab Network - Al-Nassr Construction and Contracting Company, one of the Egyptian public business sector companies will to carry out the project of building the new Khartoum Airport.

Head of the company Ahmed Fouad Abdul Aziz said that a meeting was held in Khartoum last week between the company's board members and representatives of the Sudanese government to consider all issues related to the building of the airport and other projects Sudan is to carry out this year.

This comes within the government's efforts to further economic cooperation with Sudan.

Unifying stances over Nile water file

Members of the Egyptian-Sudanese joint technical authority, currently in session in Khartoum, stressed that development projects on the Nile river course, including dams, should be established on the basis of what has been agreed upon by all Nile Basin countries.

They added that such projects must be useful to all countries, while avoid damaging the interests of any Nile Basin country.

The authority said that in case of a negative impact on Egypt and Sudan due to any of these projects, the two states have the right to take a stance to amend this project, supported by the technical and legal bases approved by international law.

Dr. Hesham Qandil, head of the Nile water sector and Egyptian chief delegate to the meeting, said that members of the authority stressed the importance of coordination between the two sides on the Nile file in order to unify the visions and agree on a strategy in the next phase.

Source: Global Arab Network.
Link: http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/2011072411246/Aviation/sudan-egypt-builds-new-khartoum-airport.html.

The Dead Sea: Deader than Ever and Getting More So

By Karl Vick / Mount Sodom
Wednesday, July 20, 2011

There is dead and there is dying. The Dead Sea manages both.

It's dead because the water in it contains way, way too much salt — eight times as much as the oceans — for virtually any living thing to survive. With a shoreline at the lowest land point on the globe — 1,388 ft. (423 m) below sea level — and no outlet, millennia of evaporation has left the seabed so caked with minerals the freshwater that flows in turns immediately lethal.

Not that much freshwater flows in these days. That's why the sea is dying, or drying up, at the rate of more than 3 vertical feet (1 m) per year — which on the gradual slope of the western shore can translate into 65 ft. (20 m) of exposed seabed. Most of the damage has been done in the last half-century, when almost all the water that once reached the Dead Sea was diverted to farms and taps. The Jordan River, so mighty in the Bible, is today a puny creek that draws snarls from disappointed tourists. "Everything changed when we started diverting water from the Sea of Galilee," says Mira Edelstein of Friends of the Earth Middle East. "The Jordan River used to bring 1.3 billion cu. ft. [37 million cu m] of water a year. Today it's 50 million. That's 2% of what it was."

At the same time, a unique and thirsty industry has been taking water from the sea, accelerating its decline. At the southern tip of the sea, the sprawling Dead Sea Works leaches huge quantities of the fertilizer potash from the seawater by funneling water through a canal into vast evaporation ponds in what once was the sea's southern basin. The Israeli company puts some of the water back, but combined with a similar operation on the Jordanian side, the result is a net loss for an already shrinking lake. "It's the combined issue of the Jordan River not flowing in anymore and industry drawing out water from the south," Edelstein says. "No wonder the Dead Sea is dying."

It's a spectacular death. Huge sinkholes are opening up, the earth's crust collapsing as freshwater springs follow receding seashore downhill. When the freshwater encounters massive subterranean boulders made of salt, it dissolves them, leaving the crust to collapse under its own weight, or, say, the weight of the woman who dropped 25 ft. (8 m) into the first one to open at the Ein Gedi campground in 1998. The same process is killing sumptuous oases. Three gardens fed by springs are drying as the water heads downslope, the plants unable to follow because the former lake bed is lethally saturated with salt. "Huge oases are disappearing," says Ariel Kedem, an instructor at the field school in Ein Gedi, Israel.

What to do? One especially extravagant option: pipe in water from the Red Sea, 118 miles (190 km) to the south. The Red-to-Dead canal would cost at least $17 billion and risk throwing the ecology of the Dead Sea wildly out of balance, not least because the Red Sea is a piece of the Indian Ocean, while what's been flowing into the Dead Sea for millennia is freshwater. Still, the plan has a fan in the Kingdom of Jordan, which would build a desalination plant on the canal and thereby supply its capital region with badly needed (and hugely expensive) drinking water.

Among those leery of this plan is Dead Sea Works, which has based a $20 billion business (the market cap of owner Israel Chemicals) on the current ecology. "We are afraid the mixture of waters will create something we don't want to see," says Noam Goldstein, vice president for infrastructure.

Potash is usually mined, but at the Dead Sea it is gathered by moving water from one evaporation pond to the next. In the first, the salt falls away, collecting on the bottom. In the next pond what gathers are crystals of carnelite, which are 25% potassium chloride. That's dredged and piped to a nearby factory that looks like something from a fanciful children's book as bulldozers move like toys atop a massive snow white mound of potash. The viewing point off Route 90 is almost a better show than nearby Mount Sodom, the massive, sinister-looking salt mountain with the outcropping known as Lot's wife.

"The real canal to the Dead Sea is the Jordan River," says Edelstein, of Friends of the Earth. "Not everywhere in the world do you have the Jordan River — which we've killed — a river that's holy to half of humanity." Reviving the Jordan, however, would require cooperation from all the countries currently draining it, including two technically at war, Israel and Syria. Such cooperation is also a precondition to the Dead Sea becoming a UNESCO World Heritage site, a designation that seems reasonable enough given its current position as a finalist to be named one of the Seven Wonders of Nature.

"The only thing that can really help is if the Dead Sea won the Seven Wonders," says Kedem, who sees tourism as the best protector of the place. Just now, though, tourism itself is in jeopardy, at least Israeli tourism. Jordan's plush resorts remain unthreatened, but every hotel on the western side was built not on the sea itself but on the shallow evaporation ponds to the south. This was a dubious choice in more ways than one. Guests peer from beach chairs at berms and earthworks. And the ponds are slowly filling up with salt — which means their water levels are actually rising. By 2030, six hotels will be flooded unless Dead Sea Works agrees to dredge the salt. It says it will, but is negotiating with the Israeli government and hotels over who should foot the $1.5 billion bill (about a year's profit).

It's a peculiar twist, given that receding water is the area's paramount problem. Even so, Dead Sea Works wants to dig yet another massive evaporation pond, filled with more water pumped from the actual Dead Sea, further accelerating its demise. Goldstein points out two other factors: the new pond would let visitors to the nearby mountaintop fortress of Masada look down on water again. And, not least: "We would be more profitable." With reporting by Aaron J. Klein

Source: TIME.
Link: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2084164,00.html.

High-Speed Train Collision Kills At Least 32 in China

By Chen Jinghui & Gao Zitan
July 23, 2011

Fourth accident on rail system since July 10.

A fatal train crash on China’s high-speed rail system took place on the night of July 23. On the line from Hangzhou to Fuzhou two trains collided on a bridge. So far 32 fatalities have been reported and more than 191 are said to be injured.

China National Radio reported that the accident was caused by the train D3115, from Hangzhou to Fuzhou, losing power after being hit by lightening, causing it to come to a stop on a bridge in southeast China’s Wenzhou City in Zhejiang Province.

Then train D301, from Beijing to Fuzhou, plowed into D3115 from behind.

D3115 was almost fully loaded with about 1,300-1,400 passengers, with about 100 passengers per car. On impact, two passenger cars from D3115 derailed, along with four passenger cars from D301. Two of the derailed cars plunged off the bridge. The driver of D301 was among the dead, his body found at the scene.

Internet users posted messages from the scene of the crash. One blogger wrote, “Help! D301 derailed just outside of Wenzhou South Railway Station! Now the carriage is filled with the sound of kids crying, but not a single crew member has come out to help! Please come help us!”

One blogger wrote that the lights in D301 went out immediately after it violently collided with D3115, and cars one to three fell off the bridge. Many blood-soaked, injured passengers broke the windows to get out of the cars, the blogger said.

One passenger, who was in carriage five of the D301 train, wrote that it was completely dark in his car after the collision and the passengers were not able to break the windows, so they had to escape from an opening in the front of the car.

Over one hundred ambulances have rushed to the scene to tend to the victims, and local hospitals are said to be in dire need of more blood.

Mr. Zhang was near the scene. He said he heard a thundering crash and saw two bullet trains collide with each other. He and many local residents immediately rushed to the scene to help with rescue work.

A blogger described the scene after the collision: “There are so many fire trucks. A friend of mine saw a slow-moving train hit by a fast-moving train from behind. He saw smoke coming out of the trains. Those fire trucks must be heading that way.”

Many netizens posted messages on microblogs, looking for their loved ones.

Mr. Hu, a passenger on one of the trains, told The Epoch Times “There are still a lot of people inside the train waiting to be rescued.”

A patient in Wenzhou Kangning Hospital told The Epoch Times: “I heard that four passengers were seen being sent to the hospital morgue. My friends told me that all the hospitals in Wenzhou are treating injuries from this collision.”

One railroad engineer wrote in a blog post that D3115 stopped at a bridge after being hit by lightening. The rail line’s network system was damaged and failed to detect a train parked on the bridge, which caused the second train to collide with the train before it.

A Wenzhou City resident, Mr. Chen, raised doubts about the explanation given for the crash. “The weather was not good, but those experts should have taken this into consideration. I’m not convinced by this explanation.”

In an interview with Beijing News in June, Chang Zhenchen, a high-speed rail engineer and official with the high-speed rail system claimed that the rail system met European standards. He guaranteed that a collision from behind will not happen.

The accident in Wenzhou City was the fourth accident on China’s high-speed rail system since July 10.

Source: The Epoch Times.
Link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/high-speed-train-collision-kills-at-least-32-in-china-59455.html.

Egyptian Protestors Continue in Tahrir After Clashes

By Shannon Liao
July 24, 2011

Hundreds of Egyptians continued to protest in Tahrir Square Sunday after a night of violent clashes with military forces that left hundreds injured.

Violence erupted after protesters were blocked from proceeding to the headquarters of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), AFP reported.

Earlier that day SCAF had accused one pro-democracy group, April 6, of sowing strife, according to another AFP report.

The Egyptian government reported that 231 people were injured after fighting broke out Saturday night in the neighborhood of Abbasiya in central Cairo.

On Thursday, Egypt’s interim military government rearranged the Cabinet bringing in 14 new faces and keeping 13 from Mubarak-era ministers. The move failed to appease protesters who are upset at what they say is the slow pace of reforms.

For nearly the past month, protesters have returned to the square to demand speedier reforms and the prosecution of crimes committed against protesters during unrest earlier this year that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

Source: The Epoch Times.
Link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/egyptian-protestors-continue-in-tahrir-after-clashes-59473.html.

Tamil Party Wins Elections in Former War-zone Regions

By Jasper Fakkert
July 24, 2011

Sri Lanka’s largest Tamil party Saturday won a majority of seats in regions torn by decades of civil war.

The local elections were the first in the country since government forces defeated Tamil Tiger separatists in armed conflict in 2009.

The Tamil National Alliance won with two-thirds of the vote coming away with 18 out of 26 seats in the north and east of the country.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s United People’s Freedom Alliance won all other contested districts in Saturday’s elections, BBC reported.

Tamil politicians and civil society groups had accused the government of using threats and scare tactics ahead of the elections, according to the report.

The United Nations reported that both government forces and the Tigers committed war crimes during the three-decade-long conflict.

According to the U.N., there are credible allegations that the Sri Lankan government killed many civilians in widespread shelling, which hit hospitals and other humanitarian facilities. The rebels are accused of using civilians as human shields and killing civilians indiscriminately, as well as recruiting child soldiers, according to the report.

Source: The Epoch Times.
Link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/tamil-party-wins-elections-in-former-war-zone-regions-59482.html.

Deadly Attacks in Norway Bring Sorrow and Solidarity

By Angela Wang
July 24, 2011

“It is nearly two days since Norway was hit by the worst atrocity it has seen since the second world war—On Utoya, and in Oslo. It seems like an eternity. These have been hours, days, and nights filled with shock, despair, anger, and weeping,” said Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to the victims of Friday’s attacks in an emotional memorial service at Oslo Cathedral on Sunday.

The country known to the world as one of the most peaceful is still reeling from the act of right-wing extremist, Anders Breivik, who blew apart the main government building, housing the prime minister’s office among others, and opened fire on members of the governing party’s youth league at their yearly summer camp on an island two hours later. His plan to bomb two more buildings was foiled after police arrested him on the island.

So far, 93 deaths have been confirmed, 7 from the bombing and 86 from the shooting spree. Thirty people are still in critical condition at the nation’s leading Oslo University Hospital. With several people still listed as missing, the death toll it is feared will rise.

’Pure Evilness’

The man who carried out the gruesome killings, described by the prime minister as acts of “pure evilness,” has been identified as 32-year-old Norwegian citizen Anders Behring Breivik. Breivik is currently in detention and is scheduled to attend a closed meeting with the police at Oslo City Court on Monday.

A far-right extremist who believes that what he did was “necessary,” Breivik’s target was the governing leftist and pro-immigration Labor Party. In a YouTube video and a 1,500-page manifesto published online the same day as the attacks, Breivik expressed hatred toward the Muslim presence in Europe, leftists, and multiculturalists.

Breivik describes his ideology as cultural conservatism, seeing it as his goal to “influence the society and the way it is governed,” said lawyer Geir Lippestad according to newspaper VG. Parts of the writings were copied from those of the unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

Adrian Pracon, a 21-year-old who survived the Utoya Island with a gunshot wound in the shoulder, said during the ordeal he came across a teary 11-year-old on his desperate run to escape from the island. “He came and told me that his father died,” Pracon told national broadcaster NRK.

“The situation was so chaotic that he just walked further.” Pracon soon overheard a heartbreaking cry from the child and a plea, “Do not shoot at me. You have shot enough. You already killed my father. I am too young to die,” he said in a direct encounter with the perpetrator. Miraculously, his words saved his life.

With no boats to escape the island, trapped youths took off their colorful clothes, hid in the bushes, under cliffs, or ran toward the beach to try to swim away. According to reports from survivors, Breivik kept shooting and shouting, “You are going to die.”

“He started shooting at us, and shot and shot until no one moved. I was shot in the thigh, but acted like I was dead. I heard him refill ammunition, and that’s the worst moment in my life,” said 16-year-old Ingvild Stensrud who played dead while lying between dead friends, reported NRK.

A Small But Strong Nation

In the face of tragedy, Norwegians are standing in solidarity.

After news of the shooting broke, Norwegian Facebook users set up a group to call for volunteers. Thousands of wall posts offered bedrooms for sleepovers, transportation in private cars and boats, and blood donations.

The city of Oslo, almost emptied for an entire day after authorities ordered people to keep away on Friday, but Sunday was a gathering point for tearful citizens lightening up the town with candles, flowers, and cards.

“I strongly believe that freedom is stronger than fear. I strongly believe in an open Norwegian democracy and society. I strongly believe in the opportunity to live freely and safely in our nation,” King Harald told the nation, as broadcast by NRK.

At the ceremony at Oslo Cathedral, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, fighting back tears, helped 7-year-old Princess Ingrid Alexandra and 5-year-old Prince Sverre Magnus light candles.

Sunday night, tens of thousands people gathered in front of Oslo City Hall for a parade, a rally and a night to stand together in solidarity.

Source: The Epoch Times.
Link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/deadly-attacks-in-norway-bring-sorrow-and-solidarity-59483-all.html.