Japan provides post-cyclone, 110-million-dollar loan to Philippines

Manila - Japan is providing a 109.8-million-dollar loan to the Philippines to rebuild infrastructure damaged by two devastating cyclones last year, the government in Manila said Monday.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo said he signed the loan agreement with Japanese Ambassador Makoto Katsura.

Romulo welcomed the aid, extended in response to the Philippines' request for help after the storms.

"This Japanese assistance package will provide much-needed funds for rehabilitating our physical structures and assets and improving their carrying and load capacity," he said.

"More importantly, this vital package helps us lay the foundations for our climate-proofing efforts," he said. "This is a vital task, given that typhoons and extreme weather events can only be expected to increase in intensity and frequency as a result of climate change."

Nearly 1,000 people were killed by floods, landslides and other accidents caused by Tropical Storms Ketsana and Parma in September and October.

Ketsana dumped one month's worth of rain in less than one day and caused the worst flooding in metropolitan Manila and nearby provinces in more than 40 years.

Many roads, bridges, power lines, homes and schools were damaged or destroyed by the two cyclones. Some communities in the northern Philippines are still difficult to reach because of the devastation.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/320554,japan-provides-post-cyclone-110-million-dollar-loan-to-philippines.html.

Transport strike disrupts rail traffic in Portugal

Lisbon - A transport strike Monday disrupted rail traffic in Portugal, with only one quarter of local trains running during the morning, trade union sources said.

Some regional and all international trains would also run while nearly all intercity links would be canceled, engine drivers' union representative Antonio Medeiros said.

About 160 buses were providing transport in the Lisbon and Porto regions to make up for the lack of trains.

However, bus traffic elsewhere was expected to suffer interruptions because of the strike, as well as ferries on the river Tagus.

The strike was called by several transport trade unions in protest at wage freezes in the public and private sectors.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/320563,transport-strike-disrupts-rail-traffic-in-portugal.html.

Catalan independence movement loses momentum in Spain

Barcelona - The separatist movement in the north-eastern Spanish region of Catalonia has suffered a new blow as few people bothered to vote in unofficial independence referendums organized in more than 200 localities, according to voter turnout figures given by organizers on Monday.

About 20 per cent of eligible voters went to polls in the localities, which included several large cities such as Gerona and Llerida, on Sunday.

However, 92.5 per cent of those who did vote backed the independence of the economically powerful region of about 7 million residents.

Similar large-scale votes have previously been staged - in December and again in February - in a total of 240 localities. Support for independence was massive, but voter turnout went down from 27 per cent in December to 21 per cent in February.

The referendums were organized by separatist associations, without being recognized by the Spanish government.

The other Spanish region to have a major independence movement is the Basque region. The Catalan movement does not have a violent component, while the Basque movement includes the militant separatist group ETA.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/320571,catalan-independence-movement-loses-momentum-in-spain.html.

South Sudan sees Kiir win as a step to independence

AFP/Beitiu, Sudan

Southern Sudanese yesterday hailed the election of secessionist former rebel leader Salva Kiir as their regional president as a step forward on the road to independence from Khartoum.

“For us south Sudanese, we congratulate Salva Kiir for being president of south Sudan for the second time so he can take us to the referendum and to independence,” said a man in his 20s in the small southern oil town of Bentiu, who gave his name only as William.

Kiir, the leader of the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, won a second term as president of the autonomous regional government for south Sudan established by a landmark 2005 peace deal with the Khartoum regime, according to official results released yesterday.

That deal, which brought an end to Africa’s longest-running civil war, also provides for a referendum in January next year on full independence for the south, an election in which Kiir has vowed to campaign for a yes vote.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, whose victory in simultaneous national elections earlier this month was also announced yesterday, campaigned for unity but pledged that the vote on independence for the south would go ahead as planned.

William said he was unconcerned about the win for Bashir, who led the Khartoum government for 16 of the 22 years of its devastating civil war with the rebel SPLM.
“We don’t mind if Bashir is elected or not. We don’t care,” he said in Bentiu’s Grand Hotel bar as he sipped beer while watching a soap opera.

On the other side of town in the Green Village bar, news of Kiir’s victory was greeted with restrained clapping.

“Salva Kiir wants to implement the CPA,” SPLM member Zacariah Manyang said, referring to the so-called Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005. “That’s why people in the south have again selected him.”

Manyang was less apathetic about the election as national president of Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in the Khartoum government’s six-year-old conflict with ethnic minority rebels in the western region of Darfur.

“Nobody in the south is happy for Bashir to come back again,” he said.

“Bashir and his party don’t want to promote peace in southern Sudan. He has reneged on many political agreements but, due to the weak nature of political parties in the north, he won.”

Manyang said Kiir’s election had been widely anticipated, hence the lack of immediate celebrations. But he added that he expected the SPLM leader’s supporters to take to the streets later in the day when the sun was less intense.

Stephen Keah Luony, a student from the southern town of Wau passing through Bentiu, was adamant that independence from Khartoum was the only solution for the underdeveloped and still war-ravaged south.

“We are tired of those in the north taking everything,” he said.

Source: Gulf Times.
Link: http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=357776&version=1&template_id=37&parent_id=17.

Ban: On Chernobyl anniversary, need for better nuclear security

New York - The explosion of the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, 24 years ago on Monday showed graphically the need to strengthen the safety and security of nuclear material and power plants, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Monday.

Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are organizing a conference in April 2011, the 25th anniversary of the accident, to review progress in restoring normal life in regions affected by the nuclear disaster.

Those three countries have been calling for international health and decontamination assistance since the Chernobyl meltdown, when radioactive fallout drifted over vast regions in then Soviet Union and some of its satellite republics, Western and Eastern Europe.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and World Health Organization (WHO), participants in the Chernobyl Forum, reported in 2005 "fewer than 50" direct deaths and estimated there would be thousands of cancer deaths among the hundreds of thousands of people exposed to the radioactive plume.

But others believe the numbers are greater. A report by Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko which appeared in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science showed that by 2004, there were 985,000 additional deaths worldwide caused by the nuclear disaster, including 212,000 of them within Western Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

The Chernobyl forum is intended as a platform to debate the consequences of the nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986.

"One of the most important global lessons of the Chernobyl disaster is the importance of strengthening the safety and security of nuclear material and facilities," Ban said in a message.

"The UN stands ready to do everything in its power to further the region's revival," Ban said, He called on the international community to support the full recovery of regions contaminated by radio-active material.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/320682,ban-on-chernobyl-anniversary-need-for-better-nuclear-security.html.

Kidnappers release four UN South African peacekeepers in Darfur

New York - Four United Nations peacekeepers from South Africa were released Monday after 16 days in captivity in Sudan's Darfur region, the UN said.

The four police advisers, two women and two men, in the UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) were abducted in Nyala on April 11. They underwent medical examinations and were flown back to their home country, the UN said.

Ibrahim Gambari, the UNAMID special representative, was in Nyala to greet the four peacekeepers.

"We are grateful to have our colleagues back with us," Gambari said in a statement published at UN headquarters in New York. He said the release was made possible thanks to the intervention of the Khartoum government with the "local authorities" in southern Darfur. The UN did not say who the kidnappers were.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/320655,kidnappers-release-four-un-south-african-peacekeepers-in-darfur.html.

EU to lift visas for Bosnia and Albania by end of year, Italy says

Luxembourg - Bosnia-Hercegovina and Albania are set to enjoy visa-free travel to the European Union's Schengen area by the end of the year, the Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini said Monday.

Frattini said "a positive announcement," set to encourage the two countries to complete reforms "on two or three" outstanding parameters would be given in time for the planned EU-Balkan summit in Sarajevo, on June 2.

The "final decision," the Italian minister added, would come "by October."

Frattini spoke after EU foreign ministers met in Luxembourg with the enlargement commissioner Stefan Fule, who is preparing a report on Bosnia and Albania's fitness to join the Schengen area.

"We were told by European commissioner Fule ... that Italy's wish to have a positive announcement at the June conference in Sarajevo on the visa liberalization for Bosnia and Albania will happen," Frattini said.

If the timetable were to be respected, the visa restrictions would likely be lifted in mid-December, exactly a year after a similar decision was applied to Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

The move would see all of the Western Balkans included in the Schengen area except Kosovo, which is not recognized by five out of the 27 EU member states.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/320658,eu-to-lift-visas-for-bosnia-and-albania-by-end.html.